America Moves to the City

America Moves to the City

Chapter 25

Introduction By the year 1900, the United

States’ upsurging population nearly doubled from its level of some 40 million souls in the census of 1870.

In the same time period, the population of American cities tripled.

The Urban Frontier By 1900 New York, with some 3.5 million

people, was the second largest city in the world, outranked only by London.

Throughout the world, cities were exploding. London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow, Mexico City, Calcutta, and Shanghai all doubled or tripled in size between 1850 and 1900.

Americans were also becoming commuters; electric trolleys propelled city limits outwards and near the end of the century, the nation’s first subway opened in Boston.

The Urban Frontier Industrial jobs, above all, drew people

off farms in America as well as abroad and into factory centers.

Cavernous department stores such as Macy’s in NY and Marshall Field’s in Chicago attracted urban middle-class shoppers and provided urban working-class jobs, many of them for women.

The New Immigration In each of the three decades from the

1850s through the 1870s, more than 2 million migrants had stepped onto America’s shores.

By the 1880s the stream had swelled to a rushing torrent, as more than 5 million cascaded into the country.

A new high for a single year was reached in 1882, when 788,992 arrived- more than 2,100 each day.

The New Immigration The so-called New Immigrants

came from southern and eastern Europe.

Among them were Italians, Jews, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks, and Poles.

Narrowing the Welcome Mat

Antiforeignism, or “nativism”, earlier touched off by the Irish and German arrivals in the 1840s and 1850s, bared its ugly face in the 1880s with fresh ferocity.

The New Immigrants had come for much the same reasons as the Old, but “nativists” viewed the eastern and southern Europeans as culturally and religiously exotic hordes and often gave them a rude reception.

Darwin Disrupts the Churches

Charles Darwin set forth the theory that higher forms of life had slowly evolved from lower forms, through a process of random biological mutation and adaptation.

Though initially condemned by scientists, many people in America and elsewhere embraced the theory of organic evolution by 1875.

French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck argued that traits acquired during the course of an individual’s life could shape the future genetic development of a species.

Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People

War-torn and impoverished, the South lagged far behind other regions in public education, and African Americans suffered most severely.

A staggering 44% of nonwhites were illiterate in 1900.

Booker T. Washington was called to head the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, AL in 1881.


He began with 40 students in a tumble-down shanty.

Washington’s commitment to training young blacks in agriculture and trades guided the curriculum and made it the ideal place for men like George Washington Carver to teach and research.


Other black leaders, most notably Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois assailed Washington as an “Uncle Tom” who was condemning their race to manual labor and perpetual inferiority.

Du Bois demanded complete equality for blacks, social as well as economic and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

The Appeal of the Press

Books continued to be a major source of edification and enjoyment, for both juveniles and adults.

Best sellers of the 1880s were generally old favorites like David Copperfield and Ivanhoe.

Two new journalistic tycoons emerged; Joseph Pulitzer, who was Hungarian-born and near-blind ran the New York World and William Randolph Hearst who built a powerful chain of newspapers, beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887.

Families and Women in the City

The urban era launched the era of divorce. From the late nineteenth century dates the

beginning of the “divorce revolution” that transformed the United States’ social landscape in the 20th century.

On the farm having many children meant having more hands to help with hoeing and harvesting; but in the city more children meant more mouths to feed, more crowding in the tenements, and more human baggage to carry in the uphill struggle for social mobility.

Families and Women in the City

In 1890 militant suffragists formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with again Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as the founders.

By 1900 a new generation of women had taken command of the suffrage battle.

Their most effective leader was Carrie Chapman Catt, a pragmatic and business-like reformer of relentless dedication.

Prohibiting Alcohol and Promoting Reform

Militant women entered the alcoholic arena, notably when the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was organized in 1874.

Led by the saintly Frances E. Willard (who also championed planned parenthood) and the less saintly Carrie A. Nation (who was mentally deranged and muscular, nicknamed the “Kansas Cyclone”).

Prohibiting Alcohol and Promoting Reform

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was created in 1866.

The American Red Cross was launched in 1881, with the dynamic and diminutive Clara Barton, the “angel” of Civil War battlefields, at the helm.

The Business of Amusement

Baseball, already widely played before the Civil War, was clearly emerging as the national pastime, if not a national mania.

Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a YMCA instructor in Springfield, MA.

The Business of Amusement

College football, the rugged game with its dangerous flying wedge, had become popular well before 1889, when Yale man Walter C. Camp chose his first “All-American” team.

Boxing, with its long background of bare knuckle brutality, gained a new and gloved respectability in 1892.

The Great West and the

Agricultural Revolution

Chapter 26

The Clash of Cultures on the Plains

The federal government tried to pacify the Plains Indians by signing treaties with the “chiefs” of various “tribes” at Fort Laramie in 1851.

The treaties marked the beginnings of the reservation system in the West.

They established boundaries for the territory of each tribe and attempted to separate the Indians into two great “colonies” to the north and south of a corridor of intended white settlement.

Receding Native Population

In 1886 a Sioux war party attempting to block construction of the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields ambushed Capt. William J. Fetterman’s command of 81 soldiers and civilians in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains.

One trooper’s face was split by 105 arrows.

This attack led to one of the few triumphs by the natives; the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Receding Native Population

Colonel Custer’s 7th Cavalry attacked what turned out to be a superior force of some 2,500 well-armed warriors camped along the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana.

About 250 officers and men were completely wiped out in 1876 when two supporting columns failed to come to their rescue, but the Indians’ victory was short-lived.

In a series of battles across the northern plains, the U.S. army relentlessly hunted down the Indians who had humiliated Custer.

The End of the Trail In 1890 the army stamped out the Dakota

Sioux at the Battle of Wounded Knee. In the fighting an estimated 200 hundred

Indian men, women, and children were killed, as well as 29 invading soldiers.

3 years earlier that Dawes Severalty Act was passed to dissolve many tribes as legal entities, wiped out tribal ownership of land, and set up individual Indian family heads with 160 free acres.

The Farmer’s Frontier The Homestead Act of 1862 was a new

law that allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land ( a quarter-section) by living on it for five years, improving it, and paying $30.

Before the act, public land had been sold primarily for revenue; now it was to be given away to encourage a rapid filling of empty spaces and to provide a stimulus to the family farm.

The Farmer’s Frontier During the 40 years after its passage,

about half a million families took advantage of the Homestead Act to carve out new homes in the vast open stretches.

The Homestead Act often turned out to be a cruel hoax.

The standard 160 acres frequently proved pitifully inadequate on the rain-scarce Great Plains.

Thousands of homesteaders were forced to give up the one-sided struggle against drought.

Golden McKinley and Silver Bryan

On of the big issues in the Election of 1896 was monetary policy- whether to maintain the gold standard of inflate the currency by monetizing silver.

The leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination was former Congressman William McKinley of OH.

Fellow Ohioan and iron magnate Marcus Alonzo Hanna was a huge backer of McKinley.


Hanna believed that a prime function of government was to aid business.

The Republican platform was to back the gold standard, even though, as a Congressman, McKinley had voted friendly to silver.

Dissension riddled the Democratic camp with the party split among a new candidate and Grover Cleveland.


As new Moses suddenly appeared in the person of William Jennings Bryan of NE.

The Democratic minority, including Cleveland, charged that the Populist-silverites had stolen both the name and the clothes of their party.

Class Conflict: Plowholders v. Bondholders

On election day McKinley triumphed decisively.

The vote was 271 to 176 in the Electoral College and 7,102,246 to 6,492,559 in the popular vote.

The Bryan-McKinley battle heralded the advent of a new era in American politics.

The outcome was a resounding victory for big business, the big cities, middle-class values, and financial conservatism.

Empire and Expansion

Chapter 27

Introduction After the Civil War, America remained

astonishingly indifferent to the outside world.

The sunset decades of the 19th century witnessed a momentous shift in U.S. foreign policy.

The world now had to reckon with a new great power, potentially powerful but with diplomatic ambitions and principles that remained to be defined.

Spurning the Hawaiian Pear

As trade with Japan and the Far East grew, the U.S. needed ports in the Pacific where they could refuel and resupply.

A recession hit Hawaii in 1872 and the U.S. exempted Hawaiian sugarcane from tariffs.

In exchange for the tariff, the U.S. insisted that Hawaii allow the U.S. to build a naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Queen Liliuokalani was overthrown by Hawaiian planters and U.S. Marines.


President Cleveland opposed imperialism, so he withdrew the annexation treaty from the Senate and tried to restore the Queen to power (Blount Report).

Hawaii’s new leaders refused to restore the monarchy of the Queen.

Five years later, when Cleveland left office, the U.S. annexed Hawaii.


In 1993 President Clinton signed the Apology Resolution, officially apologizing for overthrowing a sovereign nation.

Hawaii became a U.S. state in 1959.

Cubans Rise in Revolt Cuba was under Spanish rule and

frequently revolted against their rule. The U.S. regarded the Spanish as

tyrants and supported Cuba. The U.S. issued a declaration of war

against the Spanish. Although it was a short war, it altered

the position of the U.S. on the world stage.

Cubans Rise in Revolt Exiled Cuban leader Jose Marti, rallied support

for an invasion of Cuba while living in New York City in the late 1880s.

In 1894, the U.S. imposed a new tariff on Cuban sugar that devastated the Cuban economy.

Marti and his followers launched a rebellion in 1895.

Marti died, but his followers seized control of eastern Cuba, declared independence, and established the Republic of Cuba in 1895.

Cubans Rise in Revolt While the U.S. remained neutral with regard

to Cuba, many Americans publically supported the Cuban rebels.

Stories of atrocities in Cuba were reported in two of the leading newspapers of the time;o The New York Journal published by

William Randolph Hearsto The New York World published by Joseph

Pulitzer

Cubans Rise in Revolt Both of these newspapers were

accused of sensationalizing stories about Cuba in order to sell more copies.

The act of exaggerating and even making up stories is known as yellow journalism.

Cubans Rise in Revolt New U.S. Pres. William McKinley did not

want to intervene, but feared he would have to if the Spanish and Cubans could not reach a agreement.

The Spain offered the Cubans autonomy- the right to their own government- but only if Cuba remained part of the Spanish empire. The Cubans said no.

After an American ship exploded, Congress authorized McKinley to spend $50 million on war preparations.

Cubans Rise in Revolt There was a strong amount of jingoism-

aggressive nationalism- by the Republicans who felt McKinley needed to appear strong against the Spanish.

On April 19, 1898 Congress proclaimed Cuba independent and demanded Spain withdraw.

On April 24, 1898 Spain declared war on the United States

Dewey’s May Day Victory in Manila

The U.S. navy North Atlantic Squadron blockaded Cuba.

Commodore George Dewey, commander of the American naval squadron based in Hong Kong, attacked the Spanish fleet in the Philippines.

Dewey’s May Day Victory in Manila

Dewey quickly blew up 8 Spanish ships in Manila Bay.

The victory was so quick that Pres. McKinley wasn’t even ready to send the army to help Dewey.

The army assembled 20,000 troops and set off for Manila, stopping on the way to capture Guam (another Spanish island).

Filipino refugee Emilio Aguinaldo helped the U.S. capture the Philippine capital of Manila.

The Confused Invasion of Cuba

Neither the Americans nor the Spanish were ready for war.

The “Rough Riders” led by Theodore Roosevelt were able to defeat the Spanish at the Battle of Kettle Hill.

The Spanish warships fled, but the Americans sank most of their ships.

Two weeks later, the Spanish surrendered and Cuba was now under American control.

Perplexities in Puerto Rico and Cuba

There were supporters on both sides of the annexation debate.

When it all ended according to the Treaty of Paris (1898);oCuba became independento The U.S. acquired Puerto Rico and

Guamo The U.S. agreed to pay Spain $20

million for the Philippines.


The Platt Amendment specified the following:o Cuba could not make a treaty with another

nation that would weaken its independence.o Cuba had to allow the U.S. to buy or lease naval

stations in Cuba.o Cuba’s debts had to be kept low to prevent

foreign countries from landing troops to enforce payment

o The U.S. would have the right to intervene to protect Cuban independence and keep order.


In 1900, the Foraker Act was passed to establish civil government for the island.

In 1917, America granted Puerto Ricans citizenship.

The debate still rages on today as to whether Puerto Rico should become a state, become independent, or continue as a self-governing U.S. commonwealth.

Hinging the Open Door in China

After its defeat by Japan in 1894-1895, the imperialistic European powers (Russia and Germany) moved in to take advantage.

In the summer of 1899, Secretary of State John Hay dispatched to all great powers communication (Open Door note) urging all countries to respect certain Chinese rights and the ideal of fair competition.

Hay had not bothered to consult the Chinese.

Hinging the Open Door in China

Patriotic Chinese did not care to be used as a doormat by the Western powers.

In 1900 a superpatriotic group known as “Boxers”, broke loose with the cry of “Kill Foreign Devils”.

In what became known as the Boxer Rebellion, they murdered more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Chinese Christians.

TR: Brandisher of the Big Stick

Kindly William McKinley had scarcely served another six months when, in Sept. 1901, he was murdered by a deranged anarchist in Buffalo, NY.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the reins of the presidency.

Born into a wealthy and distinguished New York family, Roosevelt was partly educated in Europe and graduated from Harvard.

TR: Brandisher of the Big Stick

He loved people and mingled with those of all ranks.

TR believed that the president should lead, boldly.

The president, he felt, may take any action in the general interest that it not specifically forbidden by the laws of the Constitution.

TR’s Perversion of Monroe’s Doctrine

Nations such as Venezuela and the Dominican Republic were chronically in arrears in their payments to European creditors.

Roosevelt feared that if the Germans or British got their foot in the door as bill collectors, they might remain in Latin America (violating the Monroe Doctrine).

Roosevelt signed the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

TR’s Perversion of Monroe’s Doctrine

Roosevelt announced that in the event of future financial malfeasance by the Latin American nations, the U.S. itself would intervene, take over the customs-houses, pay off the debts, and keep the troublesome Europeans on the other side of the Atlantic.

As time wore on, the new corollary was used to justify wholesale interventions and repeated landings of the marines.

Roosevelt on the World Stage

The Russians were trying to take over the ports (Port Arthur) in Chinese Manchuria.

The Japanese felt uneasy about the Russians being so close to their country.

The Japanese pounced on the Russians at Port Arthur and dealt them a series of humiliating defeats.


Even though they were winning, the Japanese began to run low on manpower and yen, which they did not want the Russians to learn.

Japanese leaders met in secret with Roosevelt in order to help come up with a peace settlement.

Roosevelt helped achieve an agreement in 1905 in Portsmouth, MA.

For achieving the agreement, Roosevelt was given the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.


The price for diplomatic glory was high as the U.S. alienated 2 different allies.

The Russians implausibly accused Roosevelt of robbing them of victory.

The Japanese, once the protégé of the U.S., felt it did not get the compensation they so deserved.

Progressivism and the Republican

RooseveltChapter 28

Introduction Nearly 76 million Americans

greeted the new century in 1900. Almost one in seven of them was

foreign-born. “Progressives” waged war on

many evils, notably monopoly, corruption, inefficiency, and social injustice.

Progressive Roots Progressive theorists were insisting

that society could no longer afford the luxury of a limitless “let-alone” (laissez-faire) policy.

Socialists, mostly European immigrants inspired by the strong movement for state socialism in the Old World, began to register appreciable strength at the ballot box.

The social gospel promoted a brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings.

Progressive Roots University-based economists

urged new reforms modeled on European examples.

Feminists in multiplying numbers added social justice to suffrage on their list of needed reforms.

Raking Muck with the Muckrakers

Waging fierce circulation wars, newspapers began digging deep for the dirt that the public loved to hate.

Enterprising editors financed extensive research and encouraged pugnacious writing by their bright young reporters, whom President Roosevelt branded as muckrakers.

Despite presidential scolding, these muckrakers boomed circulation.

Political Progressivism In diverse ways, and sometimes with

divergent aims, the progressives sought to modernize American institutions to achieve two goals: to use the state to curb monopoly power and to improve the common person’s conditions of life and labor.

Reformers pushed for direct primary elections so as to undercut power-hungry party bosses.

They favored the initiative so that voters could directly propose legislation themselves, thus bypassing the boss-bought legislatures.

Political Progressivism Progressives agitated for the referendum, a

device that would place laws on the ballot for final approval by the people.

Finally, the recall would enable voters to remove faithless elected officials particularly those who had been bribed by bosses or lobbyists.

Direct election of U.S. Senators became a favorite goal of progressives as well.

The 17th Amendment was approved in 1913, establishing direct election of U.S. Senators.

Progressive Women By 1900 cities like New York and San

Francisco had one saloon for about every two hundred people.

Antiliquor militant organizations received powerful support from several militant organizations, notably the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

Frances E. Willard mobilized nearly 1 million women to “to make the world homelike” and built the WCTU into the largest organization of women in the world.

TR’s Square Deal for Labor

Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” for capital, labor was essentially an embracing of the three C’s: control of the corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources.

TR Corrals the Corporations

Spurred by the former-cowboy president, Congress passed effective railroad legislation, beginning with the Elkins Act of 1903.

This curb was aimed primarily at the rebate evil.

Heavy fines could now be imposed both on the railroads that gave the rebates and the shippers that accepted them.

TR Corrals the Corporations

Free passes, with their hint of bribery, were severely restricted by the Hepburn Act of 1906.

Roosevelt concluded that there were “good” trusts, with public consciences, and “bad” trusts, which lusted greedily for power.

Roosevelt never swung his trust-crushing stick with maximum force.

In many ways the huge industrial behemoths were healthier- perhaps more “tame”- at the end of Roosevelt’s reign than they had been before.

Caring for the Consumer

Appetite for reform was whetted by Upton Sinclair’s sensational novel The Jungle, published in 1906.

Sinclair intended his revolting tract to focus attention on the plight of workers in the big canning factories, instead he appalled the public with his description of disgustingly unsanitary food products.

Roosevelt induced Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

Caring for the Consumer

It decreed that the preparation of meat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can.

As a companion to the Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was designed to prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals.

The Rough Rider Thunders Out

Roosevelt felt bound by his postelection promise after the election of 1904 to not run for President again.

The man of his choice was William Howard Taft, former Secretary of War.

The Democrats nominated twice-beaten William Jennings Bryan.

The Rough Rider Thunders Out

A majority of voters chose stability with Roosevelt-endorsed Taft, who polled 321 electoral votes to 162 for Bryan.

Several other contributions of Roosevelt lasted beyond his presidency. First, he greatly enlarged the power and prestige of the presidential office.

Second, he helped shape the progressive movement and beyond it the liberal reform campaigns later in the century.

Finally, to a greater degree than any of his predecessors, TR opened the eyes of Americans to the fact that they shared the world with other nations.

Taft the Trustbuster Taft managed to gain some fame as a smasher of

monopolies. The ironic truth is that the colorless Taft brought

90 suits against the trusts during his 4 years in office, as compared with some 44 for Roosevelt in 7.5 years.

In 1911 Taft decided to press an antitrust suit against the U.S. Steel Corporation, which infuriated Roosevelt.

Once Roosevelt’s protégé, President Taft was increasingly taking on the role of his antagonist. The stage was being set for a bruising confrontation.

Taft Splits the Republican Party

Weakened by internal divisions, the Republicans lost badly in the congressional elections of 1910.

The Democrats emerged with 228 seats, leaving the once-dominant Republicans with only 161.

The Republicans, by virtue of holdovers, retained the Senate, 51 to 41, but the insurgents in their midst were numerous enough to make that hold precarious.

The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

Early in 1911 the National Progressive Republican League was formed, with fiery, white-maned Senator Robert LaFollette of WI its leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Roosevelt decided to throw his hat back into the ring and seized the Progressive banner from the pushed aside LaFollette.

The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

The Rooseveltites, who were about 100 delegates short of the winning nomination, challenged the right of some 250 Taft delegates to be seated.

Roosevelt refused to quit the game. Having tasted for the first time the

bitter cup of defeat, he was now on fire to lead a third-party crusade.

Wilsonian Progressivism at

Home and AbroadChapter 29

Introduction Democrats thought that if they could

come up with an outstanding reformist leader, they had an excellent chance of winning the White House in the election of 1912 for the first time 1897.

Such a leader appeared in Dr. Woodrow Wilson, once a mild conservative but now a militant progressive.

The “Bull Moose” Campaign of 1912

The Democrats gave Wilson a strong progressive platform to run on; dubbed the New Freedom program, it included calls for stronger antitrust legislation, banking reform, and tariff reduction.

Roosevelt boasted that he felt “as strong as a bull moose,” and the bull moose took its place with the donkey and the elephant in the American political zoo.


Roosevelt and Taft were bound to slit each other’s political throats; by dividing the Republican vote, they virtually guaranteed a Democratic victory.

Beyond clashing personalities, the overshadowing question of the 1912 campaign was which of two varieties of progressivism would prevail- Roosevelt’s New Nationalism or Wilson’s New Freedom.


Both men favored a more active government role in economic and social affairs, but they disagreed sharply over specific strategies.

TR favored continued consolidation of trusts and labor unions, paralleled by the growth of powerful regulatory agencies in Washington.

Wilson’s New Freedom, by contrast, favored small enterprise, entrepreneurship, and the free functioning of unregulated and unmonopolized markets.

Woodrow Wilson: A Minority President

Former professor Wilson won handily, with 435 electoral votes.

The “third party” candidate, Roosevelt finished second, receiving 88 electoral votes. Taft received only 8 electoral votes.

Taft and Roosevelt together polled over 1.25 million more votes than the Democrats.

Wilson Tackles the Tariff

Wilson called for an all-out assault on what he called “the triple wall of privilege”: the tariff, the banks, and the trusts.

The House swiftly passed the Underwood Tariff, which provided substantial reduction of rates.

The Tariff substantially reduced import fees as well as tax legislation.

Congress, under the newly ratified 16th Amendment, enacted a graduated income tax on incomes over $3,000.

Wilson Battles the Bankers In 1913 Wilson signed the epochal Federal

Reserve Act, the most important piece of economic legislation between the Civil War and the New Deal.

The new Federal Reserve Board, appointed by the president, oversaw a nationwide system of 12 regional reserve districts, each with its own central bank.

Wilson Battles the Bankers

The board was also empowered to issue paper money-”Federal Reserve Notes”- backed by commercial paper, such as promissory notes of businesspeople.

The Federal Reserve Act carried the nation with flying banners through the financial crises of the First World War of 1914-1918.

The President Tames the Trusts

In 1914 Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act.

The new law empowered a presidentially appointed commission to turn a searchlight on industries engaged in interstate commerce, such as meatpackers.

The commissioners rooted out unfair trade practices, including unlawful competition, false advertising, mislabeling, adulteration, and bribery.

The President Tames the Trusts

The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 lengthened the Sherman Act’s list of business practices that were deemed objectionable, including price discrimination and interlocking directorates.

The Clayton Act sought to exempt labor and agricultural organizations from antitrust prosecution, while explicitly legalizing strikes and peaceful picketing.

Wilsonian Progressivism at High

Tide Wilson further helped workers with the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1916, granting assistance to federal civil-service employees during periods of disability.

Thunder Across the Sea

Europe’s powder magazine, long smoldering, blew up in the summer of 1914, when the flaming pistol of a Serb patriot (Gavrilo Princip) killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary (Franz Ferdinand) in Sarajevo.

An outraged Vienna government, backed by Germany, forthwith presented a stern ultimatum to neighboring Serbia.

Tiny Serbia, backed by Russia, refused to bow down sufficiently.


The Russian tsar began to mobilize his ponderous war machine, menacing Germany on the west.

The Germans struck suddenly at France through unoffending Belgium.

Great Britain, its coastline jeopardized by the assault on Belgium, was sucked into the conflagration on the side of France.


Central Powers: Germany, and Austria-Hungary (later Turkey and Bulgaria).

Allied Powers: France, Britain, and Russia (later Japan and Italy).

A Precarious Neutrality President Wilson’s grief at the

outbreak of war was compounded by the recent death of his wife.

He sorrowfully issued the routine neutrality proclamation and called on Americans to be neutral in thought as well as deed.

Both sides wooed the U.S., the great neutral in the West.

A Precarious Neutrality The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians

counted on the natural sympathies of their transplanted countrymen in America.

Most Americans were anti-German from the outset.

When a German operative in 1915 absentmindedly left his briefcase on a New York elevated car, its documents detailing plans for industrial sabotage were quickly discovered and publicized.

America Earns Blood Money

When Europe burst into flames in 1914, the U.S. was bogged down in a worrisome business recession.

The J.P. Morgan Company advanced to the Allies $2.3 billion during the period of American neutrality.

Central Powers protested bitterly against the immense trade between America and the Allies, but this traffic did not in fact violate the international neutrality laws.


In response to a British blockade, the Germans announced a submarine warfare area around the British Isles, but said they would try not to sink neutral shipping…even though, they said, mistakes may occur.

In the first months of 1915 the German U-boats sank 90 ships in the war zone.


The issue became acute when the British passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sank off the coast of Ireland on May 7th, 1915, with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans.

The Lusitania was carrying forty-two hundred cases of small-arms ammunition, a fact the Germans used to justify the sinking.


After another British liner, the Arabic, was sunk in August 1915, with the loss of 2 American lives, Berlin reluctantly agreed not to sink unarmed and unresisting passenger ships without warning.

The pledge was violated in March 1916 when the Germans torpedoed a French passenger steamer, the Sussex.

Wilson informed the Germans that unless they renounced the inhuman practice of sinking merchant ships, he would break diplomatic relations.

Wilson Wins Reelection in 1916

The Progressives uproariously renominated Theodore Roosevelt, but the Rough Rider, who loathed Wilson and all his works, had no stomach for splitting the Republicans again and ensuring the reelection of hi hated rival.

In refusing to run, he sounded the death knell of the Progressive Party.

The Republicans drafted Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes, who was known for his fence-straddling and often called “Charles Evasive Hughes”.

Wilson Wins Reelection in 1916

Wilson barely squeaked through, with a final vote of 277 to 254 in the Electoral College.

Wilson had not specifically promised to keep the country out of war, but probably enough voters relied on such implicit assurances to ensure his victory.

Their hopeful expectations were soon rudely shattered.

Date post:	25-Feb-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	hart
View:	29 times
Download:	1 times

America Moves to the City

Documents