Yesterday I posted the first half of American history through the Civil War in 2200 words. Here's part II.
___________________________
Free, Sort of
8. The Civil War was over. The Union had survived by force. Slavery was gone -- legally, at least. Would America live up to its big words, again?
For about ten years, it looked like it might.
"Reconstruction" wasn’t just about rebuilding the South. It was about rebuilding the idea of America. Three new amendments were added to the Constitution. The 13th abolished slavery. The 14th said everyone born here was a citizen and had equal protection under the law. The 15th said you couldn’t deny someone the right to vote based on their race.
It sounded like a second founding. A chance to actually mean the things written down in 1776.
An amendment to the Constitution means it's just as bedrock as the first version. Anyone born here is a citizen. No president can change it. No Congress can change it. Only another amendment could change it. Of course, a rule is only meaningful if it is enforced.
For a little while, real change happened. Black men were elected to Congress -- in the 1860s! Public schools opened across the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped formerly enslaved families start new lives. It was messy, but it was movement.
But not everyone wanted to move forward.
White supremacists in the South responded with violence. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan formed to terrorize Black Americans and the white allies who tried to help them. After the northern troops left, southern legislatures passed "Black Codes" to make it easy to arrest blacks and then use them for cheap labor. The North, exhausted by war and not really too concerned, stopped caring.
1877 was a dark year in American history. Disputed ballots and partisan maneuvering called into question the results of the presidential election. The future of the government was in question.
A backroom deal brought certainty at a price. The federal government would pull troops out of the Democratic South in exchange for letting the Republican candidate win. With the soldiers gone, so were the protections. Black "citizens" were on their own.
Reconstruction was over. The South was free to recreate slavery by other means. The result at times was worse than slavery itself.
States passed laws to segregate everything from schools to train cars. These laws were challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. But as it has done occasionally in dark times, the Court gave them its blessing in 1896. Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that “separate but equal” was just fine -- even though it was never equal. It was just separate.
The South got its way. Jim Crow took root. Voter suppression. Lynching. Legal segregation. Racial terror became everyday realities for Black Americans. The dream of Reconstruction faded into the shadows. The "Great Migration" would soon begin to the north.
And it wasn’t just Black Americans facing this backlash. Immigrants from China, Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe were pouring into the country. They were looking for work, for safety, for a future. But to many who were already here, they were the enemy. Too foreign. Too Catholic. Too poor.
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major federal law to ban immigration based on race or nationality. The message was clear. Some people were more welcome than others. Some didn’t belong at all.
Humans are a herd animal. We don't like people from other herds.
Gold Outside, Rot Inside
9. Reconstruction ended. The North moved on. The South doubled down. Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs got busy getting rich. Really rich. Run-the-country kind of rich.
Welcome to the Gilded Age. It was named not for the gold itself, but for the thin, shiny layer of gold sometimes used to cover something rotten underneath.
On the surface, it looked like progress. Railroads stretched across the continent. Factories roared to life. Skyscrapers rose. Immigrants poured in, chasing opportunity. The United States became a global industrial power seemingly overnight.
But underneath? A mess.
Monopolies controlled entire industries. Carnegie controlled steel. Rockefeller controlled oil. J.P. Morgan controlled finance. They called them “captains of industry.” Critics called them "robber barons." Democracy doesn't work when the powerful can buy who they want and elect who they want.
The wealth at the top was staggering. The poverty at the bottom was crushing. Workers labored long hours in dangerous conditions -- for pennies. Children worked in coal mines and cotton mills. If you got hurt on the job, bye, bye. If you died on the job, there was no compensation. If you protested, you were fired -- or worse.
Politics wasn’t much better. Corruption was everywhere. Bribes, kickbacks, and "pay to play" ruled the day. Elected officials sold their influence. City bosses ran political machines like the mafia. The economy might have been booming for the top. But the government only served the rich, not the people.
The press was owned by the powerful. Workers were disposable. Millionaires -- who would be worth billions today -- controlled public policy. The poor were blamed for being poor. And when people got angry enough to protest, the powerful called them dangerous, un-American, even criminal.
With every wave of immigration came a wave of panic. Nativist groups sprang up, claiming America was under siege -- from Jews, Catholics, anarchists, the poor. The “real” Americans (meaning white Protestants) thought they were losing their country. They blamed immigrants for crime, disease, and unemployment. They demanded laws to keep the outsiders out. Sound familiar?
But pressure builds. And eventually, it bursts.
The labor movement began to rise. Workers organized strikes. Journalists -- called “muckrakers” by those who didn't like them -- began exposing the filth behind the glitter. Upton Sinclair wrote about rats in the meatpacking plants. Ida B. Wells wrote about lynching. Jacob Riis photographed tenement slums. Ida Tarbell took on Standard Oil.
And slowly, reforms began. Antitrust laws broke up monopolies. Child labor laws were introduced. The federal income tax was created so the rich might finally pay something back for the opportunities the country had given them. Senators would now be elected by the people, not just appointed by elites. Women fought for the right to vote and demanded to be heard.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t enough. But it was a start.
The Gilded Age had promised that anyone could rise. In reality, it was a world rigged for the few. The people finally started asking, "What kind of country is this?" And who, exactly, is it working for?
While industry built empires, new religious movements took root. This was the age of Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science. Old churches split. New sects formed.
Urban revivals, led by people like Dwight Moody, preached salvation in a world changing too fast. The world was a sinking ship. There was no way to save it. All we could do was get as many people as we could into the lifeboats.
In booming cities, social gospel preachers said that fixing poverty wasn’t just good policy -- it was God’s will. Their sense of progress thought we were getting the world ready for Christ. We were ushering in the kingdom.
Imperial Expansion
10. By the turn of the 20th century, America had seen enough smoke, smog, slums, and scandal to demand a cleanup. That’s where the group calling for progress came in, the "Progressives."
They weren’t one group. They were journalists, teachers, politicians, and pastors. They were anyone fed up with the mess left behind by the industrial machine. Their message was that the system was rigged against the ordinary person, and the people deserved better.
Teddy Roosevelt stormed into the White House swinging a “big stick.” He busted monopolies and took on the corrupt railroads. He helped protect workers in their strikes and pushed laws for clean food and drugs. He wasn’t against business. He just didn’t like bullies.
In the end, he was too much for the Republican party, and he left. This was a major turning point for the party. They were less and less the party that freed the slaves. They were more and more the party of industry and the elite.
The 16th Amendment gave us an income tax. The 17th made senators elected by the people. The 18th banned selling alcohol -- for a while. Then the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote. Four big changes in less than a decade.
Progressives believed government could be a force for good. They weren’t always right. And they didn’t always include everyone. But they changed the game.
They said corruption wasn’t inevitable. Poverty wasn’t a moral failure. Justice should be public policy. Funny how this sort of progress could become a dirty word.
11. But, then again, not all "progress" is truly progress. While reformers were busy trying to clean up the mess at home, the United States began to look outward at the rest of the world, and it liked what it saw. Land. Labor. Leverage.
In 1898, America declared war on Spain. Why? The official line was to help Cuba gain independence. The real reason? To grab territory and prove that the U.S. had power like the old European empires. The real reasons for things are often more selfish than the noble words we use to sell the public.
The U.S. won in less than four months. There were prizes: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, Hawaii was added. It had already been overtaken by American interest in its sugar. A few years later, the U.S. took part of Colombia and carved out Panama -- just to build a canal to connect the oceans. All of it was wrapped in the language of progress and civilization.
This was Manifest Destiny, international style.
Some called it expansion. Some called it liberation. In the places the U.S. took, it looked like conquest. In the Philippines, after leading the Filipinos to think the U.S. had freed them from Spain, the U.S. then turned and fought a brutal war against them. They woke up to find that they had actually been taken over by the U.S.
We said we were spreading democracy. But like King George, we often denied it to the people we governed. Turns out that it was really more about sugar, rubber, ports, and power.
But this was a turning point. The U.S. was no longer just a country. It was now an empire.
Even as America was expanding overseas, it was closing its doors at home. The early 1900s saw a rise in eugenics, anti-immigrant hysteria, and “Americanization” campaigns. Immigrants were told to drop their languages, their cultures, even their names. The country was flexing its muscles abroad while tightening its borders at home.
The Great War
12. The 20th century began with optimism. People thought the world would get better and better. Progress was everywhere. Science, technology, democracy. What could possibly go wrong? We had evolved beyond the primitive barbarism of the past.
Then came the Great War, which would turn out to be World War I. At first, leaders tried to spin it as progress -- they called it the "war to end all wars." It wouldn't end up feeling that way.
It started in Europe, in 1914, with a shot fired in Sarajevo. A bumbling teenage assassin killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The continent exploded. A bunch of old men beating their chests over who was the boss sent millions of their people to their deaths without a second thought.
The war had been waiting to happen. Empires had been stockpiling weapons, signing secret alliances, and polishing their medals for years. All it took was one spark.
One of the deadliest wars in human history followed, launched by emperors and ministers whose pride was bigger than their wisdom. Millions went to the trenches. Millions never came back.
The weapons were new -- machine guns, tanks, poison gas. But the leadership was old -- arrogant, entitled, and shockingly indifferent to human life.
For the first three years, Americans watched from a distance.
President Woodrow Wilson promised neutrality. But the war wouldn’t leave the U.S. alone. German submarines started sinking ships. A telegram was intercepted, promising Mexico a piece of the U.S. if it joined the fight. In 1917, America entered the war.
The U.S. didn't just bring boots and bullets. It brought money. Supplies. Hope. American involvement helped tip the balance. By late 1918, Germany was exhausted. The war ended. The peace, of course, was another fight altogether.
Wilson came to Europe with big dreams. He wanted a new world order. He called for open diplomacy, free trade, self-determination for nations, and -- most famously -- a League of Nations. It was meant to be a place where countries could talk instead of shoot.
The Europeans, especially Britain and France, had other ideas. They wanted revenge. Germany would pay. Literally. The Treaty of Versailles punished the losers and redrew the world map with imperial crayons. Borders shifted. Empires collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire -- gone with the stroke of a pen. And what replaced them wasn’t always stable.
Wilson got his League of Nations -- on paper. But back home, the U.S. Senate said no. America had entered the war late and left the peace early. It would not join the League. Wilson had a stroke trying to rally the nation. His dream of global cooperation was shelved.
And yet, America had changed.
We had tasted world power and liked it. The economy boomed. American culture began exporting itself. Jazz, movies, advertising, cars. Our military had proven it could fight across an ocean. Europe was battered. America was rising.
But the war had cracked the faith of a generation. The Enlightenment dream of reason and progress had gone up in trenches and gas clouds. Cynicism grew. Art got darker. Philosophy turned bleak. The world didn’t feel safe anymore. Not even modern. Just broken.
The world had been reshaped. And America -- whether it admitted it or not -- was now at the center of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment