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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 49
Description
In the late 19th century, the scale of American industry increased dramatically. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie built massive corporations and dominated entire sectors of the economy. With brilliant inventors, and a succession of improvements in manufacturing, the United States became one of the three world leaders in industry by 1890, rivaling Britain and Germany.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 79
Description
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, the year the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Endangered species, wild rivers, and scarce water resources all became issues of government concern, as did the cleanup of toxic chemical sites. Environmentalists in the 1980s and 1990s alerted the nation to further resource shortages and potential threats to Earth's welfare.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 84
Description
The immense vitality and diversity of American life have been sustained by several recurrent themes. Compared to its high ideals, America always fell short. Compared to the other nations of the world, however, America was far more impressive for its successes than for its failings.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 31
Description
From the 1820s, Americans embraced the appeal of Romanticism. In literature, it was manifested in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville; in religion, it was illustrated by the Mercersburg theology; and in politics, it was reflected in the rhetoric of Whigs and Democrats and the argument over passion.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 15
Description
For Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, the republic depended on developing the republic's systems of finance, manufacturing, and commerce. Opposing him were Thomas Jefferson and the southern agricultural interests in Congress, both of whom believed that the future of America lay in independent domestic agriculture.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 56
Description
Southern cotton sharecroppers, black and white, and Midwestern farmers were falling into debt. They tried cooperative marketing schemes but decided to turn to politics to legislate for better conditions. The Populist Party enjoyed local and state-level successes in the early 1890s, but were unable to build a stable party structure nationally.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 48
Description
Reconstruction improved many aspects of black Southerners' lives, at least for a number of years, and left deep scars on a white South that labored diligently to project an image of Northern oppression. The episode closes with an assessment of whether Reconstruction should be judged a success or a moment of lost opportunity for African Americans in the United States.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 61
Description
Manufacturers began to mass-produce products they could sell cheaply and in large numbers through nationwide advertising campaigns. Henry Ford perfected the automobile assembly line in 1914, reduced the price of cars, and raised his workers' wages, which increased their loyalty and made them potential buyers.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 58
Description
American cities were often badly planned and became overcrowded with ethnic and linguistic neighborhoods. Cities were severely polluted with smoke and ash; contaminated water supplies, poor sanitation, and large numbers of horses worsened public health conditions and shortened life expectancy. Reformers tried to Americanize urban immigrants and campaigned for city government reform.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 50
Description
The first transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. Completion cut travel time from the Mississippi to the West Coast from three months to about one week. The line was joined by other transcontinentals; a national network facilitated settlement in the plains and mountain states that had been too remote.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 46
Description
Debates in the North over how best to bring the Confederate states back into the Union began while the war still raged. This episode examines the wartime context and continues through Johnson's early presidency. By the end of 1866, the stage was set for a final showdown between the president and Congress in the fight over Reconstruction in the South.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 59
Description
The great railroad strike of 1877 showed that strikes could succeed if they enjoyed community support but would fail if business owners used their political influence and court injunctions against the unions. Bitter union-management confrontations punctuated the 1890s. Railroad leader Eugene Debs and others created the American Socialist Party in 1900.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 35
Description
James K. Polk's election was the signal for the renewal of Jacksonian expansionism and the use of expansionism to serve the interests of slavery. Polk aggressively pushed American claims to territory along the southern border with Mexico and the Canadian border with Great Britain. The latter was resolved diplomatically; the former started war against Mexico.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 30
Description
Jackson's Democrats thought of freedom as the privilege to be wealthy, and that liberty was a negative, not positive, idea. Blaming Martin van Buren for the depression, voters elected William Henry Harrison as the first Whig president. But Harrison died a month after inauguration; his vice president, John Tyler, was an old-line Democrat who promptly reinstalled the Jackson agenda.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 16
Description
The surprise development in the new republic's political life was the formation of political parties. James Madison became the organizer of the Democratic-Republicans, and Hamilton recruited his Congressional supporters into the Federalist Party. The Federalists only barely managed to elect their candidate, John Adams, as Washington's successor in 1796.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 27
Description
By 1824, Jefferson's Republican Party was becoming two parties: the National Republicans and the Democratic-Republicans. John Quincy Adams, the heir apparent, was unmistakably a National Republican. The most unpredictable candidate was Andrew Jackson. He swept the popular vote, but his 99 electoral votes did not constitute a majority of the 216 electoral votes cast.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 22
Description
The War of 1812 collapsed the US Treasury, bankrupted hundreds of businesses, and soaked up the tiny hoard of American financial capital by government borrowing. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun became the principal spokesmen for rebuilding the infrastructure of the American economy after 15 years of Jeffersonianism.
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History of the United States 2nd Edition volume 14
Description
The Revolution was not even over before the ramshackle nature of the Articles of Confederation began to show at the seams. A convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to construct a constitution, which proposed a single executive president, a bicameral Congress, and a judiciary.
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