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19 The Progressive Era
19-1 The Reformers
Principal Reform Groups
Reforming the Cities
19-2 State Political Reform
Democratizing Trends
Professional Administrators
Progress of Reforms
19-3 Women's Progressivism
19-4 Progressivism in National Politics
Theodore Roosevelt, Reformer
William Howard Taft, Reformer?
Woodrow Wilson, Reformer
19-5 Progressive Influences on American Culture
The Muckrakers
Progressivism in Business
Progressive Education
The Role of Laws
20 Becoming a World Power
20-1 Why an American Empire?
Manifest Destiny and the End of the Frontier
Financial Reasons
Religious and Moral Reasons
Geopolitical Reasons
20-2 Beginnings
Pacific Acquisitions
Latin America
The Naval Buildup
20-3 The Spanish-American War
War on Two Fronts
Why Become an Empire? Anti-Imperialism at Home
Anti-Americanism Abroad
20-4 Progressive-Era Imperialism
Trade with China
The Panama Canal
Policing Latin America
America as a World Power
20-5 World War I
The Reasons
The European War
American Neutrality, 1914–1917
Declaring War
American Involvement in the War Effort, 1917–1918
Making Peace
Chapters 19-20
The principles of the American Founding, embodied in the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the Constitution, came under assault by Progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Progressivism rejects the Founders’ ideas of natural rights, limited government, the separation of powers, representation, and federalism. Progressive government, exemplified by the modern administrative state, has fundamentally transformed key aspects of the American way of life.
Middle-class women were a key ingredient of early-twentieth-century Progressivism, leading many, but not all, Progressive-era women to advocate for suffrage. Women were finally given the vote at the national level in 1920.
“If Populism was a rural response to the Industrial Revolution and unionization the working-class response, Progressivism is often seen as the middle- and upper-class response.”
19-1 The Reformers
The Progressives were composed mainly of middle-class men and women, most of whom lived in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, although many were from more rural areas like Wisconsin. Most were raised in deeply religious families, and they pursued social reform with the zeal of religious missionaries. As members of the middle class, many Progressives had money, time, and resources to devote to the cause of reform.
Principal Reform Groups
Two groups were especially important: followers of the Social Gospel movement and women.
The Social Gospel Movement
Beginning in the 1880s, Protestant ministers responded to the problems of industrialized society by fighting for social justice and concentrating on ending poverty and prostitution. Ministers like Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch became nationally known leaders of the Social Gospel movement, and their actions prompted many middle-class citizens to fight for Progressive reform. The Social Gospel movement stood in direct contrast with those advocating Social Darwinism, whose focus was not on Jesus-inspired kindness but on the “survival of the fittest.”
Social Gospel part1, 4:12
https://youtu.be/lButwuNhFbs
Women
Progressive reform particularly attracted urban middle-class women. By the late nineteenth century, many women were well educated, and many in this first generation of college graduates ignored traditional social norms and worked outside the home. These women were schoolteachers, nurses, librarians, business clerks, typists, and doctors. However, there were fewer professional jobs for women. Participating in reform organizations was a way to perform a public service and have a job. Furthermore, although since the early nineteenth century women’s roles were supposedly confined to indoor domestic spaces (for this, see Chapter 10), with the rise of the Industrial Age it became apparent that the lives of children and families could be affected by government action, such as clean water sanitation, garbage collection, and education for poor children.
Women thus became involved in the public arena as part of their domestic responsibilities. One of the best-known Progressive reformers, Jane Addams, referred to her work as “municipal housekeeping.” But Addams was not alone. Women were some of the most active reformers of the Progressive era. For example, nurse Margaret Sanger pushed to increase the advertising and availability of contraception. Journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett led the anti-lynching crusade to stop violence against African Americans. And Alice Paul and others fought for female suffrage on the grounds that women’s new role in the public world demanded that they have the right to vote.
Women And Progressives, 4:37
https://youtu.be/1upg4ap-2Jw
Reforming the Cities
The first target of Progressive reform was the nation’s cities. From 1870 to 1900, the urban population of the United States grew from 10 million to more than 30 million. By 1920, the U.S. Census declared for the first time that the United States had more urban than nonurban dwellers. This rapid growth made it difficult for urban governments to provide basic services, such as street cleaning, garbage collection, and schools. Progressive reformers focused on fixing these problems and improving living conditions in the poor areas. If many middle-class people had not noticed the urban poverty of the era, journalist Jacob A. Riis’s illustrated book about New York City’s tenements, How the Other Half Lives (1890), shocked many Americans into “discovering” poverty.
Jacob Riis Pictures, 3:52
A collection a Jacob Riis' photographs used for my college presentation. I do not own any of the photographs nor the backing track "Running Blind" by Godmack
https://youtu.be/UxxSV1F-sM4
19-2 State Political Reform
Urban reform was just the beginning of the Progressives’ battle to rectify the nation’s problems. Progressives soon realized that improving conditions for the poor required broader political efforts at both the state and federal levels. They were determined to take the country back from the corrupt and selfish corporate interests that dominated politics without allowing politics to be co-opted by radicals. Many had been influenced by the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which utterly destroyed the once- booming island town of Galveston, Texas. Even though previous storms had barraged the city and its population of 42,000, local leaders did not heed the warnings to build a protective storm wall. After the hurricane killed more than 8,000 people, numerous factions began to reform local and state politics, attempting to give the middle class a greater voice in American politics.
Galveston: Home of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster, 3:57
On Sept. 8, 1900, an unnamed hurricane slammed into the unprotected barrier island of Galveston, Texas, killing between 6,000 and 8,000 people. More than 111 years later, the natural disaster stands as the worst in the history of the United States. Watch the NewsHour Health Unit's report on long-term recovery efforts after Hurricane Ike, Galveston's most recent disaster: http://to.pbs.org/oFWSso.
https://youtu.be/9Gsg9CJOhAc
Democratizing Trends
One way Progressive reformers attempted to take greater control of the political process was to change how senators were elected. Hitherto, senators had been chosen by state legislatures. Progressives proposed that senators be elected directly by citizens, enabling citizens to vote for a candidate they trusted. Many senators and businessmen opposed the idea; they distrusted the voters’ ability to select candidates and had no desire to campaign before the public. But, in 1913, after several years of agitation, the reform became law as the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Another democratizing trend was illustrated by the initiative and the referendum, which together were designed to allow citizens more control over state law. Previously, those who sought to implement change had to create and maintain an expensive lobby in their state capital. Initiatives and referendums allowed citizens to collect a few thousand signatures on a petition (or referendum) advocating their idea (or initiative) in order to get the initiative on the ballot. On Election Day, voters could give their direct opinion on the question. If a majority of voters favored the reform, it would become state law, even if a majority in the state legislature did not support the measure. Between 1900 and 1920, this new approach was adopted in numerous states, and it is still in use today.
Similar democratic reforms were the primary election and the recall. The primary is a preliminary election designed to let voters choose which political candidates will run for public office, rather than leaving the selection to potentially corrupt politicians plotting in “smoke-filled rooms.” The recall is a device by which petitioning citizens can, with a vote, dismiss state officers, governors, and judges who are deemed to have violated the popular interest.
Despite these democratic impulses, it must be said that most Progressives were not radically democratic, and most did not oppose the spread of the poll tax in the South or, for that matter, other voter elimination tactics that lowered voting numbers dramatically. In general, most Progressives wanted to limit the crony capitalism that shaped Gilded Age politics without allowing radicals to gain control of the political process.
17th Amendment, 1:16
https://youtu.be/8EKm_zhYvfQ
Utah Sen. Alvin Jackson Supports Repealing the 17th Amendment, 1:14
Utah Sen. Alvin Jackson (R-Highland) is backing a resolution that calls for the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Ratified in 1913 by 36 states, that's the amendment that lets people choose their senators by popular vote.
https://youtu.be/t7ulQcEyJlc
Professional Administrators
In addition to reshaping the political process in order to ensure that middle-class goals were more easily met, reformers also sought measures to ensure that the right person got the right job. Sometimes this impulse meant that Progressive reformers made certain government positions exempt from voting altogether. One chronic complaint against city political machines was that important administrative posts always went to friends of the “bosses” rather than to experts, and middle-class Progressives wanted to make sure their values were implemented.
To get rid of cronyism, most Progressives supported the creation of a professional corps of administrators. The corps required anyone who wanted a government job to take a competitive exam. Only those who passed could get a job, and only those who excelled could rise to influential, decision making positions. Ideally, no matter what political party won each new election, jobholders would be allowed to maintain their positions. This system ensured continuity and efficiency rather than a chaotic turnover of personnel each time a new party came into office.
Progress of Reforms
One by one, states adopted these various reforms, mostly beginning in the West and the Midwest. In Wisconsin at the turn of the century, Robert “Battling Bob” La Follette, the first Progressive governor of Wisconsin, created a Legislative Reference Bureau that became known as the “Wisconsin Idea.” It was a board of experts such as Richard T. Ely, who ensured sound drafting of Wisconsin’s laws for such things as worker’s compensation, government regulation of railroad companies, and conservation of natural resources. The keys to reform were appointed commissions of experts working in the name of civil service.
New York City, where political machines remained strong, also changed local politics. In response to residents’ complaints, and in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire, leaders of Tammany Hall began to advocate moderate reforms. These included the abolition of child labor and the improvement of safety standards in the workplace.
Fighting Bob LaFollette Film 1924, 2:14
Washington D.C. August 11, 1924
https://youtu.be/d5plfw9dV24
19-3 Women's Progressivism
Although women spearheaded many significant Progressive-era reforms, they were still denied the right to vote. This became increasingly problematic once more and more women understood that individuals in the Industrial Age were buffeted by social and economic forces that were beyond their control and that required the involvement of the federal government. Many women thus sought access to the ballot, and changes began to be implemented, beginning mostly in the western states (see Map 19.1).
Two main groups furthered the cause of women’s suffrage: (1) the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), founded in 1890, and (2) the National Women’s Party (NWP), founded in 1913 and led by Alice Paul. The NAWSA worked state to state (between 1911 and 1914 it achieved the vote for women in California, Oregon, Kansas, Arizona, Montana, and Nevada) to convince opponents that women were valuable assets to society and deserved the franchise. Paul and the NWP, on the other hand, pursued a more aggressive national strategy. On the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1913, Alice Paul organized a rally of 5,000 women to demand a federal constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. She also held a six-month vigil outside the White House to protest restrictions of woman suffrage.
Women's Suffrage in the 20th Century, 2:26
https://youtu.be/uWQKYmg_0R0
Margaret Sanger promoted reproductive rights for women, including advocating birth control.
Margaret Sanger
The founder of Planned Parenthood
1) “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
Margaret Sanger
In a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble in December, 19, 1939, Sanger exposited her vision for the “Negro Project,” a freshly launched collaboration between the American Birth Control League and Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau. The letter echoes the eugenic ideologies still visible within the corporate vein of Planned Parenthood today.
It seems to me from my experience…that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts.
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal.
We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.2) “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan.”
In 1926, Sanger spoke at a meeting hosted by the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey. Following the invitation, Sanger describes her elation after receiving multiple speaking requests from white supremacy groups. She writes of the experience on page 366 of her book, An Autobiography:
I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.3) “A dead weight of human waste.”
In “Pivot of Civilization,” Sanger penned her thoughts regarding immigrants, the poor, and the error of philanthropy. Sanger’s ideology of racial and social hygiene bleeds through her writings on breeding an ideal human race:
Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks [of people] that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.Sanger contends that philanthropy to help poor, struggling mothers does not offer women the opportunity to ” avoid bringing into the world” more children, but encourages a “dead weight of human weight” that “healthier” societies must shoulder.
It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste.4) “Birth control is nothing more or less than…weeding out the unfit.”
Birth Control Pill Container – Image by Beathan
Sanger famously coined the term “birth control” with the intention of eliminating the reproduction of human beings who were considered “less fit.” In her writings from “Morality and Birth Control” and “Birth Control and the New Race,” the Planned Parenthood founder noted that the chief aim of the practice of birth control is to produce a “cleaner race.” Sanger’s vision for birth control was to prevent the birth of individuals whom she believed were unfit for mankind:
Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race.5) “Human beings who never should have been born at all.”
Birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.
In “The Pivot of Civilization” and “A Plan for Peace,” Sanger describes the eugenic value of eliminating persons – minorities, the sick, and the disabled – through sterilization or segregation:
Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism … [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste.
Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant … We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.
The main objects of the Population Congress would be to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring[;] to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.
6) “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world.”
In an 1957 interview with journalist Mike Wallace, Sanger advocated that the greatest evil is a family that chooses to bring children into the world. Sanger, who advocated for a system requiring every American family to submit a request to the government to have a child, told America Weekly in 1934 that it has “become necessary to establish a system of birth permits.”
In a 1947 interview that surfaced via the British Pathe, Sanger described her desire for women to cease completely from having children for 10 years. When asked by reporter John Parsons if such a theory is anti-social, Sanger replied, “On the contrary. It seems to me that it is more practical and humane.”
Reporter: “What about the women who want babies now and in 10 years will not be able to have babies? How impractical, don’t you think?”
Sanger: “Oh, John, you sure ask hard questions. I should think that instead of being impractical, it is really very practical and intelligent and humane.”
Reporter: “But Mrs. Slee, in this country, having babies is the only thing left which is both unrationed and untaxed. Do you think that we really ought to stop?”
Sanger: “Well, I suppose a subject like that is really so personal that it is entirely left to the parent to decide, but from my view, I believe there should be no more babies in starving countries for the next 10 years.”
While the radical ideologies of Planned Parenthood’s founder permeated her writings, the abortion giant’s willingness to profit off the targeted killings of black Americans through abortion is still true today. As documented in a Live Action undercover investigation, the abortion giant is willing to bankroll the destruction of black lives for profit.
The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Alveda King, remarked on Planned Parenthood’s abortion-on-demand corporate ideology:
https://youtu.be/mWDPBmw0_RYI think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world – that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin – that people can – can commit.7) “But for my view, I believe that there should be no more babies in starving countries for the next 10 years.”
In a 1947 interview that surfaced via the British Pathe, Sanger described her desire for women to cease completely from having children for 10 years. When asked by reporter John Parsons if such a theory is anti-social, Sanger replied, “On the contrary. It seems to me that it is more practical and humane.”
Reporter: “What about the women who want babies now and in 10 years will not be able to have babies? How impractical, don’t you think?”
Sanger: “Oh, John, you sure ask hard questions. I should think that instead of being impractical, it is really very practical and intelligent and humane.”
Reporter: “But Mrs. Slee, in this country, having babies is the only thing left which is both unrationed and untaxed. Do you think that we really ought to stop?”
Sanger: “Well, I suppose a subject like that is really so personal that it is entirely left to the parent to decide, but from my view, I believe there should be no more babies in starving countries for the next 10 years.”
While the radical ideologies of Planned Parenthood’s founder permeated her writings, the abortion giant’s willingness to profit off the targeted killings of black Americans through abortion is still true today. As documented in a Live Action undercover investigation, the abortion giant is willing to bankroll the destruction of black lives for profit.
The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Alveda King, remarked on Planned Parenthood’s abortion-on-demand corporate ideology:
The most obvious practitioner of racism in the United States today is Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger and recently documented as ready to accept money to eliminate black babies.
Alveda King: Defund Planned Parenthood, MLK was pro-life 3:17
Planned parenthood videos put spotlight on another issue: Procurement Companies, 2:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3fOlGTn7lM
In our day Planned Parenthood is a topic of discussion.
A partial birth abortion occurs when the living baby is pulled feet-first while its head remains in the birth canal to allow the abortionist access to puncture the base of the baby's skull in order to suck out the brain. This barbaric procedure was made illegal in 2003.
+ + Rummaging through body parts… "It's cute."
In the 11th CMP video, the testimony of Dr. Amna Dermish is on tape. Here is an excerpt from LifeNews:
"Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing a partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
In reply to a question about harvesting fetal brain, Dermish notes, 'I haven't been able to do that yet,' but exclaims with laughter, 'This will give me something to strive for!'"
In reply to a question about harvesting fetal brain, Dermish notes, 'I haven't been able to do that yet,' but exclaims with laughter, 'This will give me something to strive for!'"
Further, Dr. Dermish, who specializes in second trimester abortions, describes how her colleague likes to rummage through the baby's body parts.
"She'll pull out, like, kidneys, and like, heart, and heart we frequently see at nine weeks and she always looks for it."
"Just like, for fun?" the CMP undercover buyer asks.
Another colleague responds, "Well, it's cute."
19-4 Progressivism in National Politics"Just like, for fun?" the CMP undercover buyer asks.
Another colleague responds, "Well, it's cute."
Progressives had pursued reform at the city and state levels, but the real power of reform lay at the national level. The expansion of Progressivism into the federal arena came after the initial reforms at the state level in the late 1800s and continued under the presidential administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
During his eight years in the White House (1901–1909), President Theodore Roosevelt strongly advocated (from what he called his “bully pulpit” in the White House) Progressive reform and intervened more decisively in national affairs than any president since Abraham Lincoln. His larger-than-life personality had made him a celebrity. He built on this image during his presidency and developed what he called a “square deal” (a term he borrowed from his poker habit) because he offered an even-handed approach to the relationship between labor and business.
“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt - Mini Biography, 3:57
Watch a short biography video of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States who focused on ecological preservation. Learn more about Theodore Roosevelt: http://bit.ly/16yHJh6 Watch more videos about Theodore Roosevelt: http://bit.ly/187tKNV Watch the U.S. Presidents play list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Igx... Learn more about U.S. Presidents: http://bit.ly/R8jNbs Learn more about Nobel Peace Prize Winners: http://bit.ly/UUgurs Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was governor of New York before becoming U.S. vice president. At age 42, Teddy Roosevelt became the youngest man to assume the U.S. presidency after President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
https://youtu.be/rzm2EBYfyDg
Progressive Era
Judge Napolitano; Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom, 2:53
https://youtu.be/WuYHPwpNdZ8
Lesson 4: The Progressive Era
https://youtu.be/bG-EmH95QPUJudge Andrew Napolitano explains how the progressive era was marked by a huge expansion of the federal government and its power to regulate the states and individual behavior. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, authorizing the federal income tax, gave the government increased control over our hard-earned money; and the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for popular election of senators, removed an important obstacle to federal control of the states.
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst, is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. Judge Napolitano lectures nationally on the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, civil liberties in wartime, and human freedom. He has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. His weekly newspaper column is seen by millions every week. The Judge is the author of seven books on the U.S. Constitution, two of which have been New York Times best sellers. His most recent book is Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed63.asp
19-4 Theodore Roosevelt, Reformer
19-4 Progressivism in National Politics
Theodore Roosevelt, Reformer
Welcome to The Presidency and the Constitution.
Watch Lecture One
"Introduction: The Modern Presidency"
Overview:
The American presidency is often
called the most powerful office on earth. This is so not only because
the nation which elects the president is the most powerful nation on
earth, but also because the American Founders designed the office to be
strong and effective. However, the Founders also placed certain
restraints on this power, which are necessary to maintain liberty and
protect citizens’ rights. The modern understanding and structure of the
presidency are a threat to freedom due to the accumulation of all three
powers—legislative, executive, and judicial—in the executive branch and
the breakdown of constitutional restraints.
37:46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzXKcOx7CM
23:30, Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9J0MuBkkI
Discussion Questions
- How can we understand the presidency as a response to the weakness, and ultimately the failure, of the Articles of Confederation?
- How is the presidency fundamentally limited by the Framers' Constitution? How have such limits been broken, and can they be restored?
- Does the constitutional design of the presidency require that a person of virtue hold the office?
Lessons Learned: The Articles of Confederation, 4:01
On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation came into effect after Maryland became the thirteenth and final state to ratify them. As the first constitution for the new nation, The Articles established a national legislature but assigned it relatively little power. The individual colonies retained much of their sovereignty, and it soon became clear that such a weak federal government was ineffective. By 1787 the framers had begun writing a new constitution, the one that created the federal government Americans have today.
James M. Lindsay, CFR's senior vice president and director of studies, says that this episode in U.S. history points to the difficulty of creating a workable constitution. "It is easy to write a constitution," he says, but "hard to write a constitution that works." This lesson, he argues, should be kept in mind as countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Myanmar, and South Sudan "struggle to create effective and legitimate systems of government."
This video is part of Lessons Learned, a series dedicated to exploring historical events and examining their meaning in the context of foreign relations today: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...
https://youtu.be/1lj2UpUVqzE
2-Minute Debate: The President Has Usurped the Constitutional Power of Congress, 2:53
This debate short is part of a series co-produced by Intelligence Squared U.S. and Newsy.
The Constitution provides that "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States," and it goes on to grant Congress a robust-and fearsome-list of powers. James Madison assumed that "[i]n republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates," and he cautioned that the legislative department may tend to "draw[] all power into its impetuous vortex." But modern politics and law seem to tell a quite different story. With executive orders, administrative regulations, creative interpretations of federal statutes, and executive agreements with other nations, it may seem that the President, not Congress, is, in effect, wielding the most potent legislative power. Indeed, the Supreme Court is currently poised to decide whether President Obama's unilateral immigration actions usurped Congress's power and flouted his duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." But some argue that this is nothing new: they say that the President is not exercising legislative power; he is simply exercising his well-established executive discretion. Is Congress still the most powerful branch, or is this the era of the imperial presidency? Has the President usurped Congress's legislative power?
Watch the full debate: https://youtu.be/yYZ-1TK9pyc.
https://youtu.be/JGgM4Ml9Zmc
Article II
Section 1.
The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like manner choose the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each state having one vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Section 2.
The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.
Section 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.Section 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/187bb1cc-a465-4b85-b3f0-166bf81e122f-medium.jpeg
Theodore Roosevelt - Shall We Prepare? 3:26
Summary Two sequences of TR: Sequence 1: views of TR walking onto the porch of Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, N.Y., facing the camera, and then speaking on military preparedness during WWI; Sequence 2: views of TR sitting at his desk in the Metropolitan Magazine office in New York City and speaking with a man who may be Carl Hovey, editor of the magazine. Other Titles Roosevelt Memorial Association title: TR speaking at Sagamore Roosevelt Memorial Association title: TR in Metropolitan Magazine office, 1916 Theodore Roosevelt speaking at Sagamore Theodore Roosevelt in Metropolitan Magazine office, 1916 Created/Published United States : Paramount Pictures, 1916. Notes Editors, Frederick Palmer, Henry Reuterdahl. Appearing: President Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Hovey. Subjects Roosevelt, Theodore,--1858-1919,--Military leadership. Speeches, addresses, etc., American. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (Oyster Bay, N.Y.) Silent films. Short films. Nonfiction films. Documentary films. Newsreels. Related Names Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919. Hovey, Carl, b. 1875. Paramount Pictures. Bray Studios. Theodore Roosevelt Association Collection (Library of Congress) Related Titles Metropolitan (New York, N.Y. : 1911)
https://youtu.be/QUKpb3bStX8
In foreign affairs, Theodore Roosevelt represents a progressive hawk, and initiates a liberal tradition in American politics that continued until recent days.
The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal individual (in the American sense of the term) who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy. Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson have been described as liberal hawks for their roles in bringing about America's status as the world's premier military power. The Clinton Doctrine can also be considered as consistent with this vision. Today the term is most frequently used to describe liberals and leftists who supported or still support the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which was authorized by the United States Congress and ordered by a conservative president, George W. Bush. The war has stirred heated controversy among all political sides of the debate. The American left was divided over the issue of whether going to war in Iraq was the right decision, as some liberals felt that they should support the war, in accordance with the philosophy of liberal internationalism, which had caused them to support military intervention in the past.[1]
One document often cited as promoting a liberal hawkish point of view is Progressive Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy, published by the Progressive Policy Institute in October 2003. Another document related to this philosophy is a letter to President Bush sent by Social Democrats USA in February 2003, urging the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.
In January 2004, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, George Packer, Kenneth Pollack, Jacob Weisberg, Fareed Zakaria and Fred Kaplan participated in a five-day online forum entitled Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War, in which they discussed whether they had been correct in advocating military action against Saddam Hussein's regime. Kaplan by that point had renounced his prior support, but the general consensus among the participants was that, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war had still been justified on humanitarian grounds.
In his book The Good Fight, published in 2006, Peter Beinart renounced his prior support for the Iraq War, saying, "I was too quick to give up on containment, too quick to think time was on Saddam's side."
Harry S. Truman signing a proclamation declaring a national emergency that initiates U.S. involvement in the Korean War
19-4b William Howard Taft, Reformer?
Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, was a distinguished lawyer and later chief justice of the Supreme Court (1921–1930). He too took on the mantle of being a Progressive. Politically speaking, by the 1910s, it was the only game in town. He busted more trusts than Roosevelt, and he was key in bringing down the Standard Oil Company in 1911. But Taft was never as politically capable as Roosevelt, and in a few instances he overturned some of Roosevelt’s own “progressive reforms.” Most damningly, Taft broke up U.S. Steel despite the fact that Roosevelt had previously declared U.S. Steel a “good trust.” The various meanings of progressive were becoming problematic. In 1912, this dispute between Teddy Roosevelt and Taft led Roosevelt to form a third party, the Progressive Party, to win back the presidency from his successor. But in the end, Roosevelt and Taft split allegiances and lost to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who advocated parts of the Progressive mission with just as much zeal as Roosevelt.
President William Taft Biography, 3:16
http://www.facts-about.org.uk/america... Watch this video about President William Taft providing interesting, fun facts and info about the life biography of William Taft, President of America. Gain a fast overview of his life! Short biography with key dates containing his bio, information & trivia about his career, family, illnesses, major achievements and accomplishments. Perfect study guide for students, children and kids who want to learn about this famous American President. When was he born? What was his background? Who did he marry? How many children did he have? What did he look like - his physical description? When was William Taft inaugurated as President? What were the major events, achievements and accomplishments of the William Taft presidency? When did he die and what was the cause of his death? Our biography and video on William Taft answer the initial question - Who is William Taft, or who was William Taft ? http://www.facts-about.org.uk/index-a... Related Book: The American Presidents http://www.amazon.com/Facts-about-Pre...
https://youtu.be/tBaFgoiiFhQ
Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, when Progressive ideas were at their most influential. But Wilson did not trust big business as much as Roosevelt. In his platform message, entitled “The New Freedom,” Wilson pledged to use government power to destroy big businesses and give smaller ones greater ability to compete. He passed a series of laws that increased the size and power of the federal government, and he helped pass the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which established a regional banking system under the control of the federal government. The act also included a massive tariff reduction, the first since the Civil War, known as the Underwood Tariff. Because Wilson believed that high protectionist tariffs were unfairly enriching America’s industrialists, this tariff reduction served as a symbol of his suspicion of big business.
In 1914, Wilson assisted in passing the Clayton Antitrust Act, which outlawed unfair practices among businesses. Also in 1914, Wilson supported the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, a government agency that had the right to investigate business practices and issue rulings to prevent businesses from continuing such practices.
Wilson focused on Progressive reforms to regulate businesses, but he never fully supported the social reforms that other Progressives rallied for, such as child labor reform, women’s suffrage, and regulation of laborer workdays. Because of the popularity of these ideas, however, Wilson eventually supported the passage of several bills, including the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, which prevented the employment of children under the age of sixteen, and a bill that mandated a maximum eight-hour workday for American railroad laborers.
President Woodrow Wilson, 2:41
Wilson was an extremely activist President, introducing significant domestic reform legislation. Wilson guided the US into World War I, on the side of Great Britain and France. He transformed the war aims of the Allies into a "Fight for Democracy."
https://youtu.be/Yd7iOR0-BKI
Did Woodrow Wilson REGRET Handing AMERICA to the BANKSTERS? 6:53
While most would say the Federal Reserve was designed to stabilize the economy and prevent bank failures, more investigation shows that the Fed is a private banking cartel designed to work against the best interests of the American people. Woodrow Wilson was the president that signed the Federal Reserve legislation. Did he regret handing the power to create money to this cartel of banks? Some say he did, for Wilson has been quoted in saying: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." ~ Woodrow Wilson 1919. Is this quote of regret authentic? Join me as I uncover the mystery of this obscure, but critical quote. Find Unconventional Finance on the web: http://www.UnconventionalFIN.com/ Subscribe to Unconventional Finance on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Unconvent... Like Unconventional Finance on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Unconventiona... Links shared in the video: The website for "Freedom To Fascism" by Aaron Russo: http://FreedomToFascism.com Information about "Taxpayers' Message to Congress: Repeal the Federal Reserve Banks: Pandora's Box of Criminal Acts" by Casmir Frank Gierut: http://books.google.com/books/about/T... Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum: http://WoodrowWilson.org "The New Freedom" by Woodrow Wilson: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14811/...
https://youtu.be/7sr2DspCZig
19-5 Progressive Influences on American Culture
Progressive reformers did not limit their efforts to improving urban conditions and reforming political systems. Their ideas influenced business and educational practices and attempted to improve the overall quality of life for many Americans. Progressivism was about more than just politics. (To understand why the Progressive era occurred when it did, see “The reasons why …” box on the next page.)
19-5a The Muckrakers
In fact, Progressive ideas spread throughout the nation mainly through the voices of journalists, novelists, professors, and public intellectuals. Among the best remembered are the muckrakers, investigative writers who exposed miserable conditions in American factories, political corruption in city machines, and the financial deceits of corporations. Through diverse means, the muckrakers used these exposés to influence city dwellers to be active in flushing out immorality and to understand the positive effects of an urban democracy. Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair were the best-known muckrakers. All wrote classic books in the Progressive tradition, including Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), Steffens’s The Shame of the Cities (1904), Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), and, most notable of all, Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), which told the harrowing tale of life in a Chicago meatpacking plant.
Progressive Era: The Muckrakers, 3:54
This online lesson discusses some of the muckrakers of the Progressive Era including Frank Norris, Lewis Hine, Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis, and Upton Sinclair.
https://youtu.be/RwV2lWOgX1M
19-5 b Progressivism in Business
In business, Progressives sought to improve working conditions and professional standards, but also to improve efficiency. While one of the first measures the Progressives undertook was to improve the relationship between owners and labor, these efforts often fell flat. For instance, the National Civic Federation, founded in 1900, sought to build a partnership between owners and workers. But the organization never accomplished its goal because there were simply not enough business owners who wanted to help their workers, and many workers did not trust that owners were motivated to help them.
Besides, many Progressives were more interested in improving efficiency, no one more so than the engineer Frederick W. Taylor. Like Progressives who sought to open the political process to more efficient methods, Taylor believed that businesses could also be made more efficient if they changed some of their practices. Taylor’s key interests were scientific management (the detailed study of the best ways to schedule, organize, and standardize tasks) and time-and-motion studies (the study of exactly how factory jobs functioned). Using minute scrutiny, cameras, and stopwatches, he worked out the most efficient way to wield a shovel full of coal and showed business managers that systematic employment of his methods could boost productivity. He published his results in 1911. However, historians have recently discovered that most of his results were fabricated, leading owners to make what we now know were impossible demands of their workers. Thus Taylor’s efforts to improve efficiency made working conditions even more miserable.
Frederick W. Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor and Scientific Management, 4:57
This is a very brief video on Fredrick Taylor and his impact on Scientific Management. This project was created for our Evolution of Management Thought Class at APSU.
https://youtu.be/qbjkVfXVy9s
19-5c Progressive Education
Progressives also pursued efficiency in the educational system. They argued that, in order for citizens to work better in their jobs and participate in politics, they needed to be well educated. Thus, in cities and towns, Progressives helped build more schools and improved teacher education and salaries.
scientific management Pioneered by Frederick W. Taylor, the detailed study of the best ways to schedule, organize, and standardize work tasks
Progressive Education Association
Formed in 1919, this national association supported and advocated for education reforms that taught children to make good moral and political choices
The most famous Progressive theorist of education was John Dewey, a philosopher at the University of Chicago. Dewey founded the Laboratory School for elementary and middle school children, where he pioneered child-centered education. The idea was to allow students to pursue their own interests rather than force them to memorize a curriculum. Dewey argued that this approach taught children to live in a democracy and to make good moral and political choices for the rest of their lives. Eventually, Progressive educational ideas became so popular that, in 1919, Progressives formed the Progressive Education Association to support and advocate for these education reforms.
John Dewey's Theories on Education and Learning: An Introduction to His Life and Work, 3:56
John Dewey wrote extensively about philosophy, psychology, education, political science, and the arts. In his very full 92 years of life (1859-1952), he not only wrote about the breadth of life, he participated in it as a teacher, social critic, political activist and involved family man. This fully produced video introduces students to his philosophy and his critical studies of education, the arts and the implications of democracy for the lives of individuals and their communities.
Dewey lived in a different era of history than we do, but many of his concerns are very relevant to life today. Maintaining a democracy in the face of diverse ethnic values, educating the young to participate fully in the life of their community, and expanding individual perceptions through participation in the arts were among the issues he examined.
Contemporary examples of the influence of his work include film sequences of noted educator Deborah Meier's Mission Hill School in Roxbury, Massachusetts; commentary by literature authority Louise Rosenblatt on Dewey's theories of democratic behavior and philosopher Larry Hickman's comments on the ways technology changes our experiencing of the world. (Dr. Hickman is also the director of the Center for Dewey Studies in Illinois.) Terminology and the historical context necessary for understanding Dewey's work are provided by historical materials, newly shot visuals and clever graphics.
For more information on this film and well as purchasing options, visit http://davidsonfilms.com/
https://youtu.be/SGjSMqwlP3E
19-5d The Role of Laws
Above all, the Progressives avowed a stern belief in laws as vital instruments of social change. Instead of using large social movements or force, Progressives sought to change the way Americans lived by crafting laws against what they saw as social wrongs. In addition to the many trust busting, tariff, and voting laws they advocated, Progressives used the courts to limit the number of hours women and children could work and to end the most brutal forms of racial antagonism. They sometimes succeeded, as in the case of Muller v. Oregon (1908), which upheld a law limiting the number of hours that women could work in a day. Progressives were, however, unsuccessful in passing child labor laws and in promoting a federal anti-lynching law.
The Progressives’ love of laws led in dark directions as well. Muller v. Oregon, for example, was premised on the argument that women were weaker than men and unable to enter contracts on their own. This idea demonstrated the limitations of Progressivism in a male-dominated society.
Jim Crow Laws During the Progressive Era, 2:00
https://youtu.be/TQD9fqm_sOE
Chapter 20 Becoming a World Power
“Between 1867 and 1917, the United States became a true world power for the first time in its history.”
Between 1867 and 1917, the United States became a true world power for the first time in its history. To a large degree, this was a result of the Industrial Revolution. The search for overseas markets and the ideology of manifest destiny (which held that God had preordained that Americans would possess all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and which Americans had developed in conquering the West in the 1840s and 1850s) spurred the United States to keep pushing outward, building up its navy in the 1880s and beginning to acquire overseas territories. Many Americans also felt they had a duty to “civilize” the so-called “lesser” nations of the world, their superiority based in no small part on notions of racial superiority. Victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898 was a turning point, adding a string of island colonies in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to U.S. territory, and declaring to the world that the United States was a global power.
0:03 / 3:16 America Becomes a World Power - Preview Clip
A short segment from our video program, 'America Becomes a World Power'. For more information visit our website.
https://youtu.be/IUY_sbI1bZc
20-1 Why an American Empire?
While notions of racial superiority justified America's expansionist positions, America's creation of an overseas empire during the half-century following the Civil War was driven by four basic reasons: (1) the closing of the American frontier, (2) economics, (3) religious and moral reasons, and (4) geopolitics.
20-1a Manifest Destiny and the End of the Frontier
Global imperialism was simply an extension of the way America had “won the West.” Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued in an influential 1893 essay that America's frontier experience had played a key role in shaping America's national character, including its democratic political institutions and its free-spirited capitalism. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Turner even suggested (with some trepidation) that the frontier was so integral to the nation's psyche that Americans might require a new frontier in order to ensure the survival of its democracy. “American energy,” the Turner Thesis concluded prophetically, “will demand a wider field for its exercise.” To Turner, the development of the idea of manifest destiny meant that many Americans felt it natural to continue to explore and conquer, even if that meant crossing seas and continents.
Frederick Jackson Turner
20-1b Financial Reasons
Another—and in many cases more decisive—reason for the surge in American overseas imperialism was that American business leaders wanted access to overseas markets and materials. Like those who had first explored the American West, these business leaders usually received the assistance and protection of the federal government. They articulated a “glut thesis,” which argued that the financial panics of the 1870s and the 1890s were the result of the overproduction of goods, as the industrialized economy endured painful fits and starts. One obvious resolution to overproduction is the creation of new markets, and this led business leaders and politicians to advocate American imperial adventures abroad. To a great extent, business interests drove American foreign policy very early on.
20-1c Religious and Moral Reasons
Many Christian leaders believed that Christianity had made Western society the evolutionary pinnacle of civilization. American missionaries sought converts, believing they were bringing both progress and salvation to the “uncivilized” peoples of the world. The mood of Protestant imperialism was captured in Reverend Josiah Strong's Our Country (1885), which argued that white Christian Americans stood at the top of civilization and therefore had a moral duty to bring less privileged peoples the benefits of progress and the fruit of the Christian Gospel. (For more on “the hierarchy of races,” see Chapter 18.)
20-1d Geopolitical Reasons
Finally, beginning in the 1870s, several European powers raced to conquer vulnerable but resource-rich regions of Africa and Asia. Such conquests brought these countries substantial profits and a worldwide network of commercial and military bases. Many Americans feared that the United States, by remaining isolated from the land grabbing, would lose access to world markets and geopolitical power.
20-2 Beginnings
Dollars propelled the initial drive overseas, first throughout the Pacific, then to Latin America.
20-2a Pacific Acquisitions
20-2a Pacific Acquisitions
American businessmen and diplomats had long been attempting to gain access to markets in the Pacific, seeking, first, access to China and Japan, then permanent settlements in various islands in the Pacific. Their goal was to sell American goods to the nations of Asia.
Samoa
We Are Samoa
http://youtu.be/pXBPYsMgEb0
Alaska
20-2b Latin America
Another region of American economic interest was resource-rich Latin America. European powers had centuries-old colonial presences there, and under the growing expansionist mood, the United States set about undercutting European control and opening up American business opportunities in Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
20-2c The Naval Buildup
Spurred by these kinds of acquisitions in the name of American business interests, in 1883 Congress authorized the construction of powerful all-steel, steam-driven battleships, armed with the latest long-range artillery. The North's decisive use of naval power during the Civil War influenced this buildup. Using ironclad warships, the Union had successfully blockaded several key Confederate ports, all but crippling the South in the process. With its eyes now further afield, the American military began a broad naval buildup.
20-3 The Spanish-American War
Using this naval might, the next major international dispute—the Spanish-American War of 1898—transformed the United States into a major overseas power. Ironically, the war was not motivated by imperial appetites. Instead, it was fought for a range of humanitarian, geopolitical, and commercial reasons that, once the war was won, prompted the United States to take a larger global role at the turn of the century.
The Spanish-American War was ignited by Spain's harsh treatment of the Cuban independence movement. Cuba was one of Spain's last colonial possessions in the Western Hemisphere, but the Cuban people, resentful of Spain's heavy-handed rule, had struggled for decades to win their independence. In 1895, their resentment burst into violence when Cuban resistance leader José Martà sparked an interracial rebellion that the Spanish government attempted to put down with brutal force. Martà was eventually killed in battle, making him a martyr to the Cuban people. As the war for Cuban independence continued, the political instability devastated Cuba's economy, which was a blow to Americans who had invested in Cuba's sugar plantations. Having an unstable nation so close to U.S. borders concerned American politicians, especially when American business interests might be compromised.
Recognizing a good story when they saw one, newspaper editors (notably Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst) published graphic descriptions of the atrocities committed by the Spanish. These sensationalistic stories fomented anti-Spanish feeling among the American public, who may or may not have known of the substantial American investment in Cuba's sugar and who probably were unaware of the interracial nature of Cuba's fighting forces. During these years, this kind of journalism garnered the name yellow journalism, defined as journalism that shows little dependence on fact or research and instead uses sensationalized headlines and storylines to sell more newspapers or magazines.
20-3a War on Two Fronts
The Philippines
Like Cuba, the Philippines had long been a Spanish colonial possession, and Spain's fleet was stationed in Manila Bay. For months the U.S. fleet in the Pacific had been secretly preparing to invade the Philippines in the event of war, and, when war was finally declared, a squadron of American ships left its port in Hong Kong. In Manila Bay on May 1, the American squadron took advantage of its superior equipment to destroy or damage all Spanish ships, killing nearly four hundred Spanish sailors while suffering no American fatalities. Commodore George Dewey became a hero in America for his leadership.
Cuba
Meanwhile, back in Cuba, the United States mounted a rapid campaign to shatter the Spanish army and besiege the port city of Santiago, where Spain's Caribbean fleet was anchored. In June 1898, 17,000 U.S. troops invaded Cuba and quickly surrounded the city. The most colorful contingent of the American forces was the Rough Riders, led by the future president Theodore Roosevelt. An early and energetic supporter of the war, Roosevelt had long argued that American society needed to be more rugged and manly. It was in this spirit that he resigned his desk-bound naval post in order to lead a regiment of cavalry volunteers. Roosevelt and Leonard Wood, a veteran of the Indian Wars, gathered a mixture of Wall Street businessmen, Ivy League volunteers, western cowboys, and a few Native Americans to fight in Cuba.
Rough Riders
20-3b Why Become an Empire? Anti-Imperialism at Home
After the war—and even before—many Americans began to wonder whether the United States should become an imperial power. From the outset of the Spanish-American War, McKinley had assured the American public that the aim of the war was not to create an American empire but to protect the sovereignty of the Cuban people. That was the point of the Teller Amendment. Now that the war was over and Cuba and the Philippines were clearly not independent, McKinley and other political leaders (including Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hay) pushed for annexation of the Philippines by declaring that the Filipinos (as well as inhabitants of Puerto Rico and Guam) were too weak to govern themselves.
20-3c Anti-Americanism Abroad
If most Americans were supportive of a growing American empire, Filipinos and Cubans were not. Both countries wanted independence, not American over-lordship. Americans also frequently relied on violence and threats to preserve control in those countries. These two factors created deep veins of anti-American sentiment. Small nations were fearful that America would never allow them to be independent.
Filipino Resistance
Enraged at the prospect of a permanent American presence, Filipino leader Aguinaldo launched the same type of guerrilla war against the Americans that he had waged against the Spanish. In response, a large American force hastened to the islands and, between 1899 and 1902, fought a vicious antiinsurgency war. Both sides tortured and killed their prisoners, treating them as murderers rather than soldiers. American soldiers wrote home questioning the morality of their overseas experiences, citing atrocities like “the water cure,” in which American soldiers would hold down a suspect, place a stick between his teeth, and force him to drink tremendous amounts of salt water. If the suspect did not divulge information, an American soldier would stomp on his stomach and begin the “cure” again. In 1901, American forces captured Aguinaldo, and future president William Howard Taft, sent by McKinley to create a government for the Philippines, persuaded Aguinaldo to call for peace.
Philippines: Filipino president Duterte insults Barack Obama, calling him a "son of a whore" 5:40
https://youtu.be/g2Um0TJLEp4
20-4 Progressive-Era Imperialism
After 1900 the United States entered a period of heightened imperialistic activity somewhat similar to that of the 1840s, although this time oceans ceased to serve as boundaries of expansionist activity. Under the energetic Progressive-era presidencies of Roosevelt and Wilson, the United States took a bolder, more aggressive role in international affairs. Toward this end, Roosevelt, whose foreign policy credo was “speak softly and carry a big stick,” supported Secretary of War Elihu Root's policy of increasing the U.S. armed forces. By 1906, only the navies of Britain and Germany were larger than that of the United States.
20-4a Trade with China
After winning the Spanish-American War, the United States sought to demonstrate its status as a major international power. American policymakers first turned to China to open trade. In 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay called for an “Open Door” policy in China, which would allow all nations to trade with China on equal terms. This policy also aimed to prevent foreign powers from partitioning China as they had Africa.
20-4b The Panama Canal
The United States next focused on Panama. Ever since the 1840s, American commercial and military planners had eyed Panama's narrow isthmus as a potential site for a canal. Such interest increased after 1898, when America's new empire required easier transit between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Panama, however, belonged to Colombia, whose rights to the isthmus the United States had explicitly guaranteed in an 1848 treaty.
Panamanian Revolt
In 1901, negotiations with Colombia broke down over the price of renting the right of way for a canal. Undeterred, Roosevelt, the American president, encouraged an independence movement among the Panamanian people. This would free them from Colombia and, presumably, lead them to grant the United States unobstructed access to build its canal. The Panamanians revolted successfully, thanks in part to an American naval blockade that prevented Colombian soldiers from getting to the scene of the rebellion. As a thank-you to the United States for its timely intervention, in 1903 the new Republic of Panama leased to it a 10-mile-wide Canal Zone. American companies immediately started construction.
20-4c Policing Latin America
Concurrent with the building of the Panama Canal, the United States assumed an interventionist role throughout Latin America. Much of this new activity was prompted by continued rivalry with other imperial powers. In 1902, for example, when the Venezuelan government was unable to pay its foreign creditors, British, German, and Italian naval forces threatened to bombard Venezuelan cities unless payments were resumed. Roosevelt regarded this action as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine; by a combination of threats and promises, he persuaded the European navies to withdraw.
20-4d America as a World Power
By the early twentieth century, the United States was committed to being a major player in Latin America and Asia. The belief that America's interests ended at its oceans had been shattered. Americans could no longer think of themselves as isolated from international affairs. Nor could they smugly see their nation as completely different from the European empires whose navies and armies had conquered much of the globe. But did American interests end at the nation's borders, at the Western Hemisphere, or never? What would America's role in the world be now that its commercial interests were worldwide? Should American business interests have a role in the nation's foreign policy? How salient was the notion that the United States should share the “white man's burden” to spread democracy and white civilization to the world? Americans fell into three camps when it came to viewing themselves as a world power: (1) isolationists, (2) realists, and (3) idealists.
20-5 World War I
The US in World War I | History, 3:33
After running on the campaign, "He Kept Us Out of the War," Woodrow Wilson brings the United States into World War I in April 1917.
https://youtu.be/DHn1Egt6Xdg
World War I
20-5 World War I
World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, was a conflict of colossal proportions, killing more than 10 million soldiers and civilians, bringing down governments and empires, and pitting armies against each other all around the globe. The United States entered the war in 1917, just in time to try to manipulate the terms of surrender. It was a vital test of America's imperial ambitions.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/worldwarone/index1.shtml
Trench Warfare Game
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/worldwarone/hq/trenchwarfare.shtml
100 Years of Propaganda: WW I to the Present Day, John Church
World Wars, Desert Storm
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion
George Creel
Wilson influenced by Birth of a Nation, Lippmann a Captain in the Creel Committee
The Little American, Mary Pickford
Charlie Chaplin, British, Shoulder Arms, shooting scene
Lippmann, manufacturing consent, Chomsky
Triumph of the Will, Leni vs. Why We Fight, Frank Capra
The Negro Soldier
Uncle Walt, Donald Duck, Commando Duck, Against the Japanese
Education for Death
Desert Storm: CNN Effect
Wag the Dog
Three Kings
America's Team
Faked Kuwaiti girl testimony
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
George Orwell
Today
The Interview
American Sniper
20-5a The Reasons
Economic Competition
World War I erupted out of conflicts between rival powers in Europe, largely based on the competition for colonial empires that had been building in the past decades. In the late nineteenth century, European nations were locked in a worldwide competition to establish ever-expanding overseas empires. At home they built powerful economies premised on the Industrial Revolution, while abroad they scrambled to turn weaker countries in Africa and Asia into colonial possessions that would serve as sources of raw materials. Britain and Germany were the two largest powers. Both had embraced the transformations of the Industrial Age, and both were in competition to win the raw materials found abroad. To many observers, a confrontation between the two expanding European powers seemed inevitable.
Alliances
Anxiety about the impending clash between England and Germany led nearly all of Europe's powerful nations to enter into alliances, each pledging to come to the other's defense in the event of a war. France and Russia joined England, calling themselves the Allied Powers. Germany made treaties with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Turkey. They were called the Central Powers. Forging these alliances set the stage for tragedy, because a conflict between any two nations was bound to trigger a wider war.
“As the car came abreast he stepped forward from the curb, drew his automatic pistol from his coat and fired two shots.” —Borijove Jevtic, who was arrested with Gavrilo Princip
The Spark
The spark that ignited the war was the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He and his wife Sofia were shot on June 28, 1914, during a visit to Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serbian nationalist group called the Black Hand, which was bent on driving the Austro-Hungarians out of Serbia. This event set off a chain reaction in Europe's military alliances. Austria declared war on Serbia, which prompted Russia to help the Serbians, which led Germany to declare war on Russia and France, which triggered England to declare war on Germany. Over the next several weeks, many other nations joined the conflict, and fighting spread to the European colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (see Map 20.2 on the next page).
20-5b The European War
Hoping for a quick victory against its enemies to the west, Germany invaded France in August 1914. With British help, the French managed to hold off the German advance. A military stalemate resulted, and both sides dug into the fields of northern France. For the next four years, the Allied and Central Powers battled each other on what became called “the Western Front.” Along the Western Front, both the Central and Allied Powers dug deep webs of trenches just a few hundred feet from one another, spending nights and days fomenting attacks against one another from the depths of their respective trenches. Between the two trenches was “No Man's Land,” a bullet-strewn strip of land upon which few men dared trod. Snipers were at the ready, often aiming at the lighted fire at the tip of a cigarette. Searching for ways to win a trench war, the combatants harnessed the power of the Industrial Age, inventing machine guns, poison gases, warplanes, and tanks. The war was more brutal than anyone had anticipated.
20-5c American Neutrality, 1914-1917
Most Americans were baffled by the rivalries and alliances that had caused the war and horrified at the carnage in France. In the war's first years, Americans called it “the European War,” distancing themselves from the conflict. Yet they could not ignore such a massive war, and their sympathies were mixed. Following the tremendous immigration that had resulted from the Industrial Revolution, many Americans were recent European emigrants who felt strong ties to their homelands. On the other hand, many of the nation's political and industrial leaders were Anglophiles, who instinctively favored the English.
20-5d Declaring War
The Zimmermann Note After the declaration of unrestricted warfare in the Atlantic, German-American relations deteriorated. Not only had Germany initiated a threatening campaign, but Americans discovered that Germany was also encouraging Mexico to attack the United States. On January 16, 1917, the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, sent a note to Mexico in which he promised German support for a Mexican invasion, the goal of which was to reconquer New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas for Mexico. Unluckily for the Germans, the British intercepted the note, and they eagerly turned it over to the United States. The so-called Zimmermann Note proved a powerful tool in rallying American public support for a war against Germany.
20-5e American Involvement in the War Effort, 1917-1918
When Congress declared war in 1917, the United States was unprepared to recruit, train, equip, or transport a modern army across the Atlantic. It entered the war with no army and no stockpiles of military supplies. And, with the American economy booming, shifting to war production was a slow process. In fact, by the end of the war, the United States managed to mobilize little more than a small fraction of its economy and raised only a modest military force; fewer than 5 million men entered the armed services, and only 2.5 million of them went overseas.
20-5f Making Peace
Armistice
In October 1918, Germany made peace overtures to Wilson, agreeing to end the war on the basis of his declaration that there could be “peace without victory.” The Allied Powers wanted to fight on, believing they finally had a decisive advantage on the battlefield. The war had been viciously fought in Europe, especially after the introduction of new technologies such as planes, tanks, and chemical weapons like deadly “mustard gas.” The Allied Powers wanted to punish German wartime atrocities. But they yielded when Wilson threatened to pull American troops out of the war if the Allies were unwilling to accept overtures for peace. On November 11, 1918, both sides signed an armistice ending the war.
REFERENCES
19 The Progressive Era
19-1 The Reformers
Principal Reform Groups
Reforming the Cities
19-2 State Political Reform
Democratizing Trends
Professional Administrators
Progress of Reforms
19-3 Women's Progressivism
19-4 Progressivism in National Politics
Theodore Roosevelt, Reformer
William Howard Taft, Reformer?
Woodrow Wilson, Reformer
19-5 Progressive Influences on American Culture
The Muckrakers
Progressivism in Business
Progressive Education
The Role of Laws
20 Becoming a World Power
20-1 Why an American Empire?
Manifest Destiny and the End of the Frontier
Financial Reasons
Religious and Moral Reasons
Geopolitical Reasons
20-2 Beginnings
Pacific Acquisitions
Latin America
The Naval Buildup
20-3 The Spanish-American War
War on Two Fronts
Why Become an Empire? Anti-Imperialism at Home
Anti-Americanism Abroad
20-4 Progressive-Era Imperialism
Trade with China
The Panama Canal
Policing Latin America
America as a World Power
20-5 World War I
The Reasons
The European War
American Neutrality, 1914–1917
Declaring War
American Involvement in the War Effort, 1917–1918
Making Peace
Progressive Presidents: Crash Course US History #29, 15:06
In which John Green teaches you about the Progressive Presidents, who are not a super-group of former presidents who create complicated, symphonic, rock soundscapes that transport you into a fantasy fugue state. Although that would be awesome. The presidents most associated with the Progressive Era are Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. During the times these guys held office, trusts were busted, national parks were founded, social programs were enacted, and tariffs were lowered. It wasn't all positive though, as their collective tenure also saw Latin America invaded A LOT, a split in the Republican party that resulted in a Bull Moose, all kinds of other international intervention, and the end of the Progressive Era saw the United States involved in World War. If all this isn't enough to entice, I will point out that two people get shot in this video. Violence sells, they say. Subbable message courtesy of Tom Hopkins: I paid 50 bucks, and all I got was this. You can directly support Crash Course at https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse Subscribe for as little as $0 to keep up with everything we're doing. Free is nice, but if you can afford to pay a little every month, it really helps us to continue producing this content. Follow us! @thecrashcourse @realjohngreen @crashcoursestan @raoulmeyer @thoughtbubbler
https://youtu.be/F7flSW1PGsA
We Are Samoa
http://youtu.be/pXBPYsMgEb0
HIS 105 Week 4
Should the federal government be involved in
disaster relief?
Should the 17th Amendment be repealed?
Should experts run the government?
Should planned parenthood receive federal funds?
Can presidents destroy constitutional freedom?
Discussion
Questions
- How can we understand the presidency as a response to the weakness, and ultimately the failure, of the Articles of Confederation?
- How is the presidency fundamentally limited by the Framers' Constitution? How have such limits been broken, and can they be restored?
- Does the constitutional design of the presidency require that a person of virtue hold the office?
Should
presidents be hawks?
Did the Progressive Federal Reserve stabilize
the economy, prevent bank failures, and work for the best interests of the
American people?
Do you agree with the Progressive Jim
Crow Laws?
How did America become a world power
and should there be an American Empire?
Are Filipinos against an American
progressive Empire?
Should Americans be involved in
foreign wars?
