INSTRUCTOR MANUAL for American History Connecting with the Past 15th Edition. (Volume 2) Alan Brinkl by StudyGuide

American History Connecting with the Past 15e (Volume 2) Alan Brinkley (Instructor Manual All Chapters, 100% Original Verified, A+ Grade) (Lecture Notes Only) Chapter 16 The Conquest of the Far West Learning Objectives • • • • •

Detail the effects of ethnic, racial, and cultural prejudice on western society. Describe the three major industries important to western development and discuss their importance for the region’s economic transformation. Describe the romantic image of the West as it was expressed in art, literature, and popular culture. Explain how the actions and policies of the federal government affected the fate of western Indians. Describe the significance of the idea of the “frontier” in American history.

Chapter Overview Far from being empty and unknown, significant parts of what would become the western United States were populated by Indians and Mexicans long before the post–Civil War boom in AngloEuropean settlement. Even after the waves of white occupation, and faced with significant prejudice from those whites, large numbers of Mexicans and Asian Americans continued to live in the West. White settlement developed in initial boom and decline patterns in three industries that would do much to shape the region in the long run: mining, ranching, and commercial agriculture. Asians, Mexicans, and African Americans provided much of the labor force for these industries. In the late nineteenth century, the South and West were underdeveloped regions with an almost colonial relationship to the industrial, heavily populated Northeast and Midwest. Except for a few pockets in the Far West, the frontier line of agricultural settlement in 1860 stopped at the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Hostile Plains Indians and an unfamiliar environment combined to discourage advance. By the end of the century, the Indian barrier to white settlement had been removed, cattlemen and miners had spearheaded development, and railroads had brought farmers, who, despite nagging difficulties, had made significant adaptations to the Great Plains.

Themes •

The varied and vibrant ethnic and racial cultures that characterized the American West, and how Anglo-European whites enforced their dominant role by the latter part of the nineteenth century

• • • •

The transformation of the Far West from a sparsely populated region of Indians and various early settlers of European and Asian background into a part of the nation’s capitalistic economy The closing of the frontier as Indian resistance was eliminated, miners and cowboys spearheaded settlements, and railroads opened the area for intensive development The development of mining, ranching, and commercial farming as the three major industries of the West The problems faced by farmers as the agricultural sector entered a relative decline

Lecture Strategies The New Western History The West is similarly diverse in geography, similarly elusive in definition. Patricia Limerick’s A Legacy of Conquest discusses the various myths and images of the West, as well as summarizes the major topics as seen through the eyes of the new western history. Rich details of that new view of the West are available in Richard White’s It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. Another approach to a lecture would be to begin by contrasting the images of individual initiative—the cowboy, the prospector, or the prairie farmer—with the realities of corporate control of key resources. White and Limerick develop that idea. So too do they point out that the ideal of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier democracy—one characterized by individualism, self-reliance, and decentralized authority— might apply in Wisconsin where he grew up, but it bears scant relationship to a region dominated by technology, corporate capitalism, and government regulation. Finally, in a land where stereotypes of cowboys and miners abound, there is good anecdotal material about women’s experiences in Limerick, in White, in Dee Brown’s The Gentle Tamers, and in Joanna Stratton’s Pioneer Women.

Teaching Suggestions Economic Opportunity versus Personal Freedom One hundred years ago, the West symbolized opportunity and freedom, and that conception of the West is still thriving today. Donald Worster, in his provocative essay collection, Under Western Skies, describes two dreams that animate our sense of the West: “one of a life of nature, the other with machines; one of a life in the past, the other in the future.” He goes on to add, “If the West has any spiritual claim to uniqueness, I believe it lies in the intensity of devotion to those opposing dreams.” A discussion could invite students to explore how and why two ideals that brought so many people to the region—one of economic opportunity, the other of personal freedom—so often clash. Contrasting Indian and White Cultures Students should enjoy discussing the contrasts between Indian cultures and their own. The ecological implications of contrasting white and Indian values are especially relevant today, although we should all try to resist the somewhat facile conceit of painting Indians as IM – 16 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

proto-ecologists. A more nuanced view is developed in William Cronon’s Changes in the Land. Though it applies specifically to colonial New England and is becoming a bit dated, the ideas have general validity. In discussing the struggle between Indian and white cultures, students should be able to consider the relative importance of military, economic, social, and environmental factors in determining the outcome of the struggle between whites and Indians in the West.

Chapter 17 Industrial Supremacy Learning Objectives • • • •

Identify some of the business and industrial titans of the late nineteenth century and evaluate their contribution to America’s industrial growth. Describe the changes that took place in late-nineteenth-century corporate organization and their effect on the national economy. Explain how Social Darwinism attempted to justify the social consequences of industrial capitalism. Describe workers’ response to industrial growth and the new economy.

Chapter Overview Although some economists place the industrial “take-off” of America in the years before the Civil War, it was in the three decades following that great conflict that the United States became the world’s leading industrial power. A fortunate combination of sufficient raw materials, adequate labor, enviable technological accomplishments, effective business leadership, nationwide markets, and supportive state and national governments boosted America past its international rivals. The industrial transformation had a profound impact on the lives of the millions of workers who made the production revolution possible. Some who were distrustful of industrial power turned toward socialism; others tried to organize workers into powerful unions. But, in these early years of industrial conflict, the forces of business usually triumphed.

Themes • • •

How various factors (raw materials, labor supply, technology, business organization, growing markets, and friendly governments) combined to thrust the United States into worldwide industrial leadership How this explosion of industrial capitalism was both extolled for its accomplishments and attacked for its excesses How American workers, who on the average benefited, reacted to the physical and psychological realities of the new economic order

Lecture Strategies Industrialization in a Transatlantic Context The maturing industrial economy of America in the late nineteenth century was part of a global revolution in industry. An opening lecture might therefore set the American experience squarely in the context of other industrializing nations. Western Europe, predating industrialization in America, could serve as a useful foil for what follows in the United States. The lecture might also set the stage for beginning to explain why European reforms—from housing laws to social insurance programs—were far more ambitious than their American counterparts and served as models for what followed across the Atlantic. Particularly good for the human impact of industrialization is A. J. P. Taylor’s collection of essays, The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution. The Role of Heavy Industry A second lecture might focus on the process of industrialization by examining a few heavy industries. The rise of heavy industry is yet another distinguishing feature of a maturing industrial economy. We have used the railroads as our starting point, since they laid the foundation for industrial development, stimulated economic growth, and pioneered many new management techniques. But you can discuss similar developments in such industries as steel and coal, which are also keys to the industrial revolution. The lecture might then proceed to a discussion of the rise of mass production, mass markets, and big business, with appropriate attention paid to the managerial revolution. Adjusting to the Industrial World A third lecture in this sequence could explore the world of workers, who found themselves more and more subjected to the discipline of machines. Industrialization destroyed age-old patterns of work, and most workers underwent a painful adjustment that required them to adapt, in the words of Herbert Gutman, “older work routines to new necessities and strained those wedded to premodern patterns of labor.” Good material on the change is available in Gutman’s Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America; David Montgomery’s Workers’ Control in America; and Michael Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz’s collection of essays, Working-Class America. The strained efforts of workers to play their roles as citizens, family members, and wage earners is explored in Leon Fink’s Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. A fascinating case study of the industrial world can be found in the Amoskeag Company textile mills on the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire. At first, Amoskeag employed young women, but by the turn of the century increasing numbers of immigrant men could be found among its 17,000 machine-tending employees. They worked in a closed and self-contained environment, more tightly controlled even than workers who lived in the planned community of Pullman. For more details, see Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach’s Amoskeag. For more on working women, see Alice Kessler-Harris’s Out of Work, and for black women, Jacqueline Jones’s Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow.

Teaching Suggestions The Role of Individual Entrepreneurs in the Industrial Economy The role of individual entrepreneurs in building the new industrial order has long been the subject of historical debate. Matthew Josephson’s The Robber Barons offers a highly critical view, which later scholarship has gone far to debunk. In particular, Thomas Corcoran’s Railroad Leaders and Glenn Porter’s The Rise of Big Business present more sympathetic views. Just as important, the “managerial revolution” focuses the attention of students on the critical role played by middle managers, as corporate ownership became separated from corporate management. Alfred Chandler’s The Visible Hand details the overall process and specific strategies. Questions to be addressed here might be: were the entrepreneurs ruthless “robber barons” or forward-thinking “captains of industry”? And how important were their contributions compared to those of the middle managers? Comparing the Prewar and Postwar Economy Getting students to understand industrialization is not an easy task. One way to illustrate its effects is to compare the pre–Civil War industrial economy with the more mature industrial economy that blossomed after the war. Here students could begin to explore how industrialization contributed to greater efficiency and rising productivity, the key features of modern industrial economies. In addition, it could be useful to discuss interlocking industrial systems and how such systems actually worked.

Chapter 18 The Age of the City Learning Objectives • • • • • •

Identify the people most likely to move to the cities of late nineteenth-century America and explain why they moved. Describe the relationship between immigration and urbanization in the late nineteenth century. Analyze governmental and institutional responses to the hazards of urban life. Describe the new urban, consumer society. Describe the leisure activities of the era. Assess the development of a new “high culture” and the ways in which the elite separated themselves from the urban masses.

Chapter Overview In the years after the Civil War, America’s cities boomed as people left the rural areas of Europe and the United States to seek jobs and other attractions offered by American cities. The rapid growth of cities caused many problems in housing, transportation, and health. Technological attacks on these problems barely kept pace, and city governments often resorted to boss rule to cope. The booming cities were places of intellectual ferment and cultural change. Urban dwellers found many ways to enjoy increased leisure time. Many Americans wanted to prove to skeptical Europeans that the nation had cultural as well as economic accomplishments to admire. American culture became more uniform through free public education, mass-market journalism, and standardized sports. Higher education, especially new state universities, reached out to a wider market. More and more women attended college in coeducational and single-sex institutions.

Themes • • •

How the social and economic lure of the city attracted foreign and domestic migrants, and how these newcomers adjusted to urban life How rapid urban growth forced adaptations to severe problems of government mismanagement, poverty, inadequate housing, and precarious health and safety conditions How the urban environment served as the locus for new philosophical ideas, fresh approaches to education, rapid expansion in journalism, and a new consumerism

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How the new order of urban culture inspired serious writers and artists to render realistic portrayals of the seamy side of city life, while many middle- and upper-class Americans were engaging in expanded forms of leisure and entertainment

Lecture Strategies Relationship between Industrialization and Urbanization Urbanization, along with industrialization and immigration, was one of the great forces of change in this age of transformation. You should encourage students to understand and explore the interplay among them. The modern city could not have existed without the growing network of industrial systems that developed simultaneously. Yet those same systems could not have developed themselves without the rise of sprawling industrial cities. Indeed, urban construction replaced railroad construction as the principal catalyst for industrialization in the last third of the century. The “New” Immigrants Since immigration also served as an important source of city growth, a lecture on the “new” immigration could be most helpful to students. The aim here would be to stress the dual themes of ordeal and adventure to correct the old stereotype of immigrants as the “dregs” of humanity. In fact, the journey to America required ambition, resourcefulness, adaptability, initiative, stamina, and courage. By and large, we take up the story of immigrants once they arrive in America, placing them in the larger context of the great global migration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. You might begin with a lecture tracing the initial journey to the port cities of Europe and include, as well, the Atlantic crossing and the arrival. Good material on the European context can be found in Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers and Umberto Nelli’s The Italians of Chicago. On the arrival at Ellis Island, Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky offers a moving—if thinly veiled autobiographical—account of pulling into New York harbor and being processed at Ellis Island. The Family and Urban Life Increased interest in family life in Victorian America has produced an abundance of sources. Using notions of the middle-class home as a haven from a tumultuous urban world and middleclass conventions as a means of ordering life and controlling urban society, you could profitably explore some of these themes: sexuality and birth control, child-rearing, courtship and marriage, home life, old age, and death. Helpful sources here are Harvey Green’s The Light of the Home, Robert H. Walker’s Life in the Age of Enterprise, and Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. As a counterpoint to families, one could raise a few issues from Howard P. Chudacoff’s The Age of the Bachelor, which deals with the ubiquitous figure of the single man during this era.

Teaching Suggestions The Immigrant Experience The immigrant experience in America has been the subject of scholarly scrutiny for some time, while the notion of ethnocentrism informs almost every one of our chapters on the late nineteenth century. Earlier studies, such as F. Znaniecki and W. I. Thomas’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, stressed the inferiority of “new” immigrants, while later works, including Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted and Moses Rischin’s The Promised City, emphasize non-normative differences and the pathos of immigrant life. (For good material on the rising tide of nativism, see John Higham’s Strangers in the Land.) Students could be asked to put themselves in the place of several new arrivals, each from a different country and culture. How might such people respond to the bewildering world of America? What strategies might they develop for survival? What sorts of hostilities might they encounter? How might they describe their experiences to friends and relatives back home? Mass Consumption and Leisure Students will begin to recognize the roots of our own contemporary consumer and mass entertainment cultures in the urban environments of this era. The textbook mentions the significance of the rise of the department store in the 1890s; this notion can be expanded upon by drawing from William Leach’s rich study of department stores, Land of Desire. Similarly, you can draw upon compelling literature on the rise of mass entertainment during this period. David Nasaw’s Going Out serves as a good overview, while Robert Snyder’s Voice of the City provides a concise look at vaudeville in New York City, and Lewis Erenberg’s Steppin’ Out examines New York nightlife from the 1890 to 1930.

Chapter 19 From Crisis to Empire Learning Objectives • • • • • • •

Explain how and why the federal government attempted to regulate interstate commerce in the late nineteenth century. Describe Populism and its origins. Explain the “silver question” and its importance to Americans and their political parties. Assess the importance of the 1896 election. Analyze the sources and manifestations of U.S. imperialism. Analyze how the Spanish-American War changed the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world. Identify the major arguments for and against U.S. imperialism.

Chapter Overview Close elections and shifting control of the White House and Congress characterized the politics of the period from 1876 to 1900. Regional, ethno-cultural, and economic factors helped determine party affiliation, and elections often turned on consideration of personality. But there were real issues, too. Tariff, currency, and civil-service questions arose in almost every election. Discontented farmers in the People’s Party briefly challenged the Republicans and Democrats, but the two-party system remained intact. The election of 1896, the great battle between the gold standard and the silver standard, firmly established the Republican Party as the majority party in the United States. Agrarian and mining interests were unable to convince voters that currency inflation through the free coinage of silver would lead the nation out of the depression of the 1890s. By fusing with the Democrats, the Populists ended any chance they might have had to become a major force in American politics. By the end of the nineteenth century, business forces had triumphed. They had secured a gold-based currency and a rigorously protective tariff. Efforts to regulate railroads and trusts were half-hearted to begin with and were weakened even further by court decisions. Turning its interest from the continental United States to the world at large, America in the years after the Civil War fought a war with Spain and acquired a far-flung empire. By 1900, American possessions included Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and a string of Pacific islands. In addition, Cuba was essentially an American protectorate. The United States suddenly found itself a world power, with worldwide responsibilities and burdens. The empire had been acquired for economic and philosophical reasons, including expansionism, which could provide an outlet for a perceived glut of American goods and an arena in which to demonstrate the superiority of Western civilization. To accommodate its new role, the nation had to devise ways to improve its military establishment and govern its overseas territories. IM – 19 | 1 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

Themes • • • • • •

How evenly-balanced the Democratic and Republican parties were during the late nineteenth century, and how this balance flowed from differing regions and socioeconomic bases The inability of the political system to respond effectively to the nation’s rapid social and economic changes How the troubled agrarian sector mounted a powerful but unsuccessful challenge to the new directions of American industrial capitalism and how this confrontation came to a head during the crisis of the 1890s Why Americans turned from the old continental concept of Manifest Destiny to a new, worldwide expansionism How the Spanish-American War served as the catalyst to transform imperialist stirrings into a full-fledged empire How the nation had to make attitudinal, political, and military adjustments to its new role as a major world power

Lecture Strategies The Wizard of Oz The politics of the Gilded Age invariably causes the eyes of students to glaze over. One way to enliven the subject is to use L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) as a parable of the era. Most students have seen the 1939 MGM film and so are familiar with the basic outlines of the story (although the film version differs in important respects from the original). By beginning your lecture with a brief retelling of Baum and suggesting the allegorical quality of his work (which he vigorously denied, as does biographer Michael Patrick Hearn), you can hold the attention of students until the conclusion, when you reveal who symbolizes what: Dorothy (an “everyperson” with common sense); the Scarecrow (farmers); the Tin Woodsman (dehumanized labor); the Cowardly Lion (pacifist William Jennings Bryan); the Wicked Witch of the East (eastern money interests); the Wicked Witch of the West (the malevolent environment of the Great Plains); the Good Witches of the North and South (the farmers’ alliances); the Wizard (any one of the presidents of the Gilded Age); Oz (Washington, D.C.). The issue of bimetallism and currency reform is graphically symbolized by Dorothy’s “silver” slippers (changed to “ruby red” in the film to show off Technicolor to its best effects), the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard), and the Emerald City (greenbacks). For a fuller description see Henry M. Littlefield’s “The Wizard of Oz: Parable of Populism,” American Quarterly XVI (1964), 47–58; and Aljean Harmetz’s film, The Making of the Wizard of Oz. Gilded Age Tensions and the Depression of 1893 The tensions of the Gilded Age—particularly between farmers and corporate capitalists, labor and management, blacks and whites, have-nots and haves—culminated explosively at the end of the century. The Populist revolt, sometimes violent labor strikes, the rise in lynchings and the spread of segregation, and a wrenching depression flowed together in the turbulent 1890s. Using IM – 19 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

the depression as a focal point, a lecture could explore these tensions and the ways in which economic stress aggravated them. A good synopsis can be found in R. Hal Williams’s Decade of Decision. The unresponsiveness of government to human suffering could also serve as a useful foil to the rise of the welfare state in the 1930s, when class tensions resurfaced amid economic distress. American Imperialism Students are often surprised to have the notion of imperialism applied to their own country. In the United States even before the Civil War, continentalism had begun to give way to new visions of expansion, as more and more Americans turned their attentions to distant lands that, unlike Louisiana and the Gadsden purchase or the territories acquired after the Mexican War, did not border on the United States. Perhaps the best brief overview of these issues can be found in Thomas Patterson’s introduction to his edited collection, American Imperialism and AntiImperialism. Patterson raises three questions that could be addressed in a lecture or discussion. First, the political problem: Was American imperialism directed by an elite, by interest groups like the United Fruit Company, or by an aroused public opinion? Second, was the decision for empire rational or irrational? That is, did it grow out of inevitable processes working on American society, or out of the studied plans of expansionists, or was it a response to circumstances? Finally, there is the question of motive: What combination of economic, ideological, social, racist, and strategic factors impelled imperialism?

Teaching Suggestions Defining Populism The Populist revolt challenged traditional politics in many ways. Certainly Populism had a darker side of intolerance and paranoia, as John D. Hicks’s classic The Populist Revolt and Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform argue. On one level, Populism was rooted in the frustrations of staple crop farmers and, as such, can be seen as an extension of the new interest-group politics of the Gilded Age. Yet Populism also sought to combine with other groups—both racial and economic—that therefore distinguished it from other developing interest groups of the late nineteenth century. On still another level, as Lawrence Goodwyn suggests in Democratic Promise, Populism might be conceived of as the last radical, broad-based response to industrialism, seeking to reinvest the new industrial system with old-fashioned democracy and a lost sense of community. Students could be asked to put themselves in the place of farmers confronting a world of corporate and industrial power. What would be their response to industrialism? To the crop-lien system? Explore the role of third parties in American politics, and question their effectiveness as vehicles for single interests. Gilded Age Politics During the Gilded Age, voter participation averaged nearly 80 percent in presidential elections, most of which were hotly contested. Ask students to account for such heavy turnouts, and then question whether the Gilded Age was more “democratic” than today’s political system. In fact, you might ask students generally to compare and contrast the Gilded Age with contemporary politics, particularly the politics of campaigns and elections. Parties began to assume their IM – 19 | 3 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

modern shape at the end of the nineteenth century. More highly organized, managed increasingly by professionals, and employing early techniques of mass advertising, political parties of the Gilded Age foreshadowed the politics of the coming century in important ways. What differences between the two periods exist? Commercial or Territorial Empire? Students may find the debate over whether the United States should pursue a policy of commercial or territorial imperialism revealing. What were the pros and cons of each? While students may not be surprised that pro-imperialists often made the argument that colonized peoples would benefit from exposure to a “superior” American culture, some my be taken aback by the fact that some anti-imperialists made their arguments on racist grounds. For instance, progressive journalist Carl Schurz advocated against incorporating the Philippines into the United States because he viewed the indigenous people as inherently inferior and unworthy of participation in the American political system.

Chapter 20 The Progressives Learning Objectives • • • • • • • • •

Describe the varieties of progressivism. Explain the roles women played in the reform movement. Analyze the reasons for the decline in party influence. Describe the various people and organizations that promoted progressive reform. Describe social reformers’ major crusades. Describe the approaches that progressives utilized to challenge the power and influence of corporate America. Assess the ways in which Theodore Roosevelt changed the office of the president. Explain the complexities of the 1912 presidential election. Describe Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom.”

Chapter Overview Convinced that rapid industrialization and urbanization had created serious problems and disorder, progressives shared an optimistic vision that organized private and government action could improve society. Progressivism sought to control monopoly, build social cohesion, and promote efficiency. Muckrakers exposed social ills that Social Gospel reformers, settlement house workers, and other progressives attacked. Meanwhile, increasing standards of training and expertise were creating a new middle class of educated professionals that included some women. The progressives tried to rationalize politics by reducing the influence of political parties in municipal and state affairs. Many of the nation’s problems could be solved, some progressives believed, if alcohol was banned, immigration was restricted, and women were allowed to vote. Educated blacks teamed with sympathetic whites to form the NAACP and began the movement that eventually wiped away Jim Crow. Other progressives stressed the need for fundamental economic transformation through socialism or through milder forms of antitrust action and regulation.

Themes • • •

How progressivism was a reaction to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the United States in the late nineteenth century That all progressives shared an optimistic vision that an active government could solve problems and create an efficient, ordered society That progressives wanted to reduce the influence of party machines on politics

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How temperance, immigration restriction, and women’s suffrage movements took on crusade-like aspects

Lecture Strategies Who Were the Progressives? The complex and sometimes contradictory nature of progressivism makes it difficult for students to get their heads around it. One lecture might explore just who the progressives were and what set them apart from other members of society. It could also attempt to explain why other groups (such as boss-dominated machines) allied themselves temporarily with progressives to promote reforms (in this case the direct election of senators) that served their own interests. In the 1950s, historians developed a profile that identified progressives as young, urban, well-educated, middle class, and professional. Later work showed that what was characteristic of progressives was not necessarily distinctive, since many conservatives had a similar profile. What seems to have set progressives apart is their system of beliefs, which included an open universe, the goodness of humanity, the social origins of evil, the malleability of the environment, and the instrumentality of the mind. Labeling them, perhaps, the “progressive articles of faith,” a lecture could stress the power of ideas in history and discuss how progressive thinking differed from earlier notions. Methods borrowed from medicine, the new social sciences, and the organizational revolution in business also distinguished progressives and could serve as a second part to this lecture. Good material on progressive historiography and methodology can be found in Arthur Link and Richard McCormick’s Progressivism; while George Mowry’s The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, though dated, is still useful for its discussion of the intellectual roots of progressivism. Alternatives to Progressive Ideas for Change In the 1960s, revisionist historians were surprised to discover just how conservative progressivism was. Some, like Gabriel Kolko, went so far as to suggest that progressivism was really a “triumph of conservatism.” Yet progressivism, however moderate and preservative, was hardly the only prescription for social and political change. Another lecture might counterpose this characterization of progressivism with more radical alternatives that existed at the time, in particular socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. Remind students that socialism enjoyed the height of its popularity in the United States, especially on the municipal and state level. Here the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and the Industrial Workers of the World provide two vastly different radical foils to the progressives. Both offered more serious critiques of industrial capitalism and far different prescriptions for change. David Shannon’s The Socialist Party of America and Nick Salvatore’s Eugene V. Debs are good on the Socialist Party, while Patrick Renshaw offers an excellent brief history of the Industrial Workers of the World in The Wobblies.

Teaching Suggestions A Middle Way? Fearing upheaval from below and plutocracy from above, progressives felt the need to mediate the two in the interest of public welfare. Social justice, social welfare, and social control attacked IM – 20 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

problems from below, while economic regulation addressed those from above. Students might enjoy discussing not only the effectiveness of such strategies but the basic assumptions about capitalism, democracy, and human behavior that underlay them. How were such strategies both innovative and nostalgic, at once forward-thinking and yet deeply grounded in a longed-for past? In what ways was progressivism simply middle-class paternalism masked as reform? How was it intended to head off more radical change? Was radical change ever a real possibility? The Uses and Abuses of the Modern Liberal State Progressivism established the modern liberal state, activist and interventionist. It also developed two models, the New Nationalism and the New Freedom, for dealing with concentrated corporate and industrial power. Once these two approaches have been explored, students might be asked to discuss whether contemporary public policy has moved much beyond them. Has the modern liberal state, as fashioned by progressives, outlived its usefulness? At what point does government activism and intervention become intrusive and meddlesome? Do the benefits of social welfare outweigh the intrusiveness of the state?

Chapter 21 America and the Great War Learning Objectives • • • • • • •

Describe Roosevelt’s and Wilson’s approaches to U.S. foreign policy. Trace the developments which led to World War I. Describe the Great War and the U.S. role in it. Assess how U.S. participation in the Great War influenced American society. Describe those who opposed the war and the ways in which the U.S. government addressed that opposition. Describe the search for a satisfactory postwar settlement. Analyze the period of repression and reaction the U.S. experienced in the postwar years.

Chapter Overview Following two and a half years of pro-Allies “neutrality,” the United States entered World War I because of economic and cultural factors, as well as because of German submarine warfare. The armies and civilians of Europe had already suffered mightily by the time the United States finally entered. American forces, initially at sea and then on land, proved the margin of victory for the Allies. To mount its total effort, the United States turned to an array of unprecedented measures: sharply graduated taxes, conscription for a foreign war, bureaucratic management of the economy, and a massive propaganda and anti-sedition campaign. Women entered the workforce in record numbers, and the hopes of African Americans were raised by military service and warrelated jobs in the North. President Woodrow Wilson formulated American war aims in his famous Fourteen Points, but he was unable to convince either Europe or the United States to accept them fully as the basis for peace. By 1920, the American people, tired from nearly three decades of turmoil, had repudiated Wilson’s precious League of Nations in favor of an illusion called “normalcy.”

Themes • • • •

How the United States, which had leaned toward the Allies since the outbreak of World War I, was eventually drawn into full participation in the war That the American intervention on land and sea provided the balance of victory for the beleaguered Allied forces How the Wilson administration financed the war, managed the economy, and encouraged public support of the war effort That Woodrow Wilson tried to apply his lofty war aims to the realities of world politics, and that he substantially failed IM – 21 | 1

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That the American war effort had profound economic, social, and racial significance

Lecture Strategies U.S. Foreign Policy in a Global Context: Competition and Revolution A lecture setting American foreign policy in its global context might be a useful starting point for understanding progressive diplomacy. A latecomer in the race toward empire, the United States faced not only imperial rivals in the first decade of the twentieth century but a world beset by revolution in the second. Organizing a lecture around the destabilizing forces of competition and revolution could thereby give students a sense of the difficulties progressive diplomats faced as they tried to secure America’s place as a great power. American responses to the revolutions in China, Mexico, and Russia furnish particularly apt cases for testing American efforts first to win a commercial empire, then to establish a new world order. Good information on Wilson’s response to revolution can be found in Gordon Levin’s Woodrow Wilson and World Politics and John Lewis Gaddis’s Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The Fate of Wilsonian Internationalism A second lecture in this series might set the stage for the failure of the new world order. The diplomacy of balanced power and spheres of influence was upset by World War I. Wilson’s effort to replace selfish nationalism with cooperative internationalism ultimately foundered but has remained a dream of policymakers ever since. Tracing the origins and fate of Wilsonian internationalism, from its roots in progressive reform to its demise in the ill-fated League of Nations, would also point the way toward World War II by clarifying how it developed from issues unresolved twenty years earlier. Despite their obvious differences, the two wars might be conceived of as one (perhaps called the “Second Thirty Years’ War”), which might provide a helpful, overarching concept.

Teaching Suggestions Progressive Foreign Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean The progressive record of intervention in the Caribbean and Latin America was defended on the basis of both idealism and self-interest. Despite differences in context and strategy, American foreign policy, particularly with respect to Central and Latin America, continues to be defended on similar grounds. The history of the Panama Canal offers a useful case study for examining such justifications and for exploring the changing limits of American power abroad. The acquisition of the canal raised questions, then and later, about the appropriateness of American intervention in the affairs of other countries. Recent treaties providing for transfer of the Canal Zone to Panama were hotly debated and suggest that the issue is far from dead. Walter LaFeber’s The Panama Canal contains excellent material on the entire history of Panama, the Canal Zone, and American involvement. Students might also be pressed to discuss more covert interventions in Guatemala, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere in the region in light of the diplomatic history of the early twentieth century. How have things changed? In what ways have they remained the same? IM – 21 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

American Opposition to Entering World War I Many students are surprised to learn that there was substantial opposition to American involvement in World War I. Most assume that the United States suffered a direct attack or, at the very least, was united in its opposition to Germany and the other Central Powers. Here is an opportunity to discuss not only opposition to American entry, but the consequences of it as well. Ask students why certain groups, such as Irish Americans, German Americans, and socialists, opposed American participation. Explore with them how pre-war Allied propaganda and wartime American propaganda were designed to unite public opinion. Here, too, is a chance to examine the process of declaring war. The attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II is the model that students often look to. Yet most American wars have not been fought as the result of such direct attacks. How has the United States become involved in wars? What is the role of the “loyal opposition” to a particular war? The Drive for Unity Total wars, in which whole societies are enlisted in the war effort, have been characteristic of the twentieth century. National unity—and national conformity—have therefore become increasingly important for victory. During World War I, the drive for unity became a coercive urge to conform, which sometimes violated cherished civil liberties. Discuss with students the ways in which wartime espionage, sabotage, and sedition laws led to wartime violations of civil liberties. Surely such laws have a place in wartime society. At what point do they threaten to destroy the system they are designed to protect? For a good examination of the fate of civil liberties during World War I, see Paul L. Murphy’s World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties.

Chapter 22 The “New Era” Learning Objectives • • • • • •

Assess the impact of the automobile on American life. Identify the special problems faced by female, black, immigrant, and unskilled laborers in the 1920s. Describe the religious response to the consumer culture of the 1920s. Assess the concept of the “new woman” of the 1920s as myth or reality. Describe the nature and extent of the predominant conflicts in the 1920s. Analyze the twelve-year period during which the Republican Party controlled the presidency and Congress.

Chapter Overview Through the mid-1920s, America enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, fueled by a great boom in automobile production and related businesses. Many people believed that the progressive ideal of an efficient, ordered society was at hand. The boom, however, masked problems. The prosperity was not equitably distributed through society; many workers and farmers, including most minorities, were excluded. The new ways forged by economic and technological advancement brought an unprecedented cultural nationalism, but they also aroused serious conflicts as both intellectuals and traditionalists attacked elements of the New Era culture. Presidents Harding and Coolidge, despite their contrasting styles, personified the pro-business policies of the Republican Party, which dominated American politics throughout the 1920s.

Themes • • • • •

How the automobile boom and new technology led to the economic expansion of the 1920s That most workers and farmers failed to share equitably in the decade’s prosperity How a nationwide consumer-oriented culture began to shape society and how the “new woman” emerged How the changing society disenchanted some artists and intellectuals and led to broad cultural conflict over ethnic and religious concerns That Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, despite their dissimilar personalities, presided over ardently pro-business administrations

Lecture Strategies Divisions within the Democratic Party The history of the Democratic Party becomes an excellent vehicle for examining how tensions between traditionalism and modernism were played out in the political arena. Focusing on such divisive issues as prohibition, religious fundamentalism, and the Ku Klux Klan, you can examine their crippling effect on the party and its national fortunes. Using Al Smith and William Jennings Bryan as symbolic of the urban and rural wings of the party personifies the differences between and older and newer America and sharpens students’ awareness of the intolerance each had for the other. David Burner’s The Politics of Provincialism has excellent material as well as the useful conceptual framework of Al Smith’s “urban provincialism.” Modernizing Business and Public Policy Business and public policy can also be linked to the theme of traditionalism and modernism. As mechanization took command of industry and new techniques of management spread, productivity soared. Continuing consolidation seemed the most efficient means of rationalizing the economy without sacrificing prosperity. In all these ways modernism expressed itself in private enterprise. Modernism found expression in public policies too, whether in government efforts to rationalize the budget-making process or to promote the trade association movement through FTC-sponsored conferences. Yet “associationalism,” at least as Herbert Hoover conceived of it, blended more traditional respect for community and democracy with modern, progressive concern for efficiency and order. Trade associations, for example, could be seen as business and industrial communities that would achieve order by cooperative policies voted on by member firms. Joan Hoff Wilson’s Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive is a helpful source. African Americans in the 1920s The African American experience in the 1920s invites exploration as a precursor to later black nationalist movements. Garveyism as a nascent expression of rising race consciousness and pride among ordinary people is a good starting point (although the movement cannot be understood without reference to the black wartime experience and the white backlash of 1919). Comparison of the separatist United Negro Improvement Association with such middle-class reform organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League, with their emphasis on assimilation and amelioration, illuminates two basic strategies for change that will characterize later movements. Here, too, you can introduce the Harlem Renaissance, which expresses similar racial sensibilities but by and large eschews political activism. Nathan Huggins’s The Harlem Renaissance contains a wealth of information on all three, framed in a provocative and critical argument. See also Laurence Levine’s incisive essays, “The Concept of the New Negro and the Realities of Black Culture” and “Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization,” in Levine’s The Unpredictable Past.

Teaching Suggestions Prohibition in Context Misconceptions about the 1920s abound, particularly about some of its more extreme expressions. Students, for example, assume that prohibition was a simplistic moral reform that failed. Explore with them the long history of temperance and high expectations of reformers, who thought that outlawing the manufacture, sale, transportation, and importation of alcohol would cure a host of social ills. Clarify the ways in which prohibition was an instrument of social control, aimed at working-class and ethnic urbanites whose very presence seemed to be challenging “traditional” values. (How valid, even, is such a characterization of those values, given the degree to which America has always been an “alcoholic republic”?) Finally, stress how prohibition worked to reduce drinking among the very groups at which reformers aimed. See Andrew Sinclair’s Era of Excess, Joseph R. Gusfeld’s The Symbolic Crusade, and W. J. Rorabaugh’s The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. The KKK in the 1920s A second set of misconceptions worth exploring involves the Ku Klux Klan. Students commonly assume the Klan was an anti-black movement of rural “rednecks.” In doing so, they miss the point of the modern Klan, which expresses the insecurities of its historical context. Reborn in 1915 (in the wake of the Leo Frank case), it was deeply rooted in anti-Semitism and antiCatholicism. The reborn Klan stood not only for white supremacy but for native Protestantism and localism against threats of all kinds, whether blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, or centralized government control. As further evidence of the widespread nature of these insecurities, make clear to students that the Klan was as much an urban organization as a rural one, with nearly half its membership in the 1920s and with over half its leadership living in cities. Here, too, is the place to underscore the Klan’s appeal to women and families and the Klan’s use of modern techniques of advertising and promotion. See Kenneth Jackson’s The Ku Klux Klan in the City, David Chalmers’s Hooded Americanism, and Kathleen M. Blee’s Women of the Klan.

Chapter 23 The Great Depression Learning Objectives • • • • • •

Explain the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the Depression. Analyze the plight of farmers during the Depression, particularly in terms of the environmental conditions that they faced. Identify the problems women, both black and white, confronted when working outside the home. Assess the influence of the radio and movies on social and family life. Describe the left’s response to the Great Depression. Describe the influence of Hoover’s political beliefs on his attempts to deal with the Depression.

Chapter Overview In October 1929, the stock market’s over-inflated values collapsed and the Great Depression began. Its causes were complex and its consequences were enormous. In a few short years, the 2-percent unemployment rate of the 1920s had become the 25-percent rate of 1932. The nation’s political institutions were not equipped to respond. The task overwhelmed local and private relief efforts. President Herbert Hoover’s tentative program of voluntary cooperation, big-business loans, and limited public works was activist by old standards but inadequate to the challenge. American tariffs and war-debt policy aggravated international economic problems and thereby added to domestic woes. Although the suffering of Americans, especially African Americans and Hispanics, was great, most citizens clung to traditional values and resisted radical solutions. With veterans marching, farmers protesting, and millions not working, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency.

Themes • • •

How weaknesses underlying the apparent prosperity of the 1920s led to the Great Depression, and how the stock market crash touched it off in the United States and around the world That neither the efforts of local and private relief agencies nor the early volunteerism of Herbert Hoover were able to halt the spiral of rising unemployment and declining production How the economic pressures of the Depression affected the American people, especially minorities

•

How the misery of those affected by the Depression swept Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the presidency

Lecture Strategies The Human Impact of the Great Depression The human impact of the Great Depression is a topic worth exploring more thoroughly, since students have a limited appreciation of the world before the creation of the modern welfare state. A lecture describing that world could be used to enlighten them and prepare the way for a second lecture on the ways in which the Hoover administration began to depart from traditional remedies. The first lecture might focus on the costs—both material and emotional—of the Great Depression. This, after all, was an age when there were no free-lunch programs, no Social Security, few pension programs, and fewer plans for unemployment relief. Furthermore, most victims of the Depression came from single-wage-earner families. Devastation cut deep, though it ought to be emphasized that most Americans tightened their belts rather than lost their shirts. There are several good sources. McElvaine’s Great Depression has excellent chapters on the human descent as well as on the survival and modification of traditional values in the face of crisis. Caroline Bird’s The Invisible Scar looks closely at the Depression’s effect on individuals and on family life, while Studs Terkel’s Hard Times contains good anecdotal material. Reevaluating Herbert Hoover Too often students regard Hoover as many contemporaries did in the wake of the stock market crash. To them, he was the man who brought on the Depression and did nothing to resolve it or to soften its impact. Such myths are a useful organizing device, for Hoover was no American Nero, fiddling as the country plummeted into ruin. Hoover’s Depression program was more active and ambitious than any of his predecessors’ would have been. (Here comparisons with the passivity of Grover Cleveland in 1893 or Woodrow Wilson in 1920 serve as useful foils.) Hoover’s failures stemmed not from inactivity or insensitivity but from other problems—style and personality, inexperience with electoral politics, and ideological fears that forceful government action would stifle liberty in America as it had in Europe (not an unreasonable fear then or later). It should also be stressed that Hoover looks so timid in hindsight because Franklin Roosevelt performed so audaciously. Yet students should be reminded that even Roosevelt’s New Deal failed to solve the riddle of recovery.

Teaching Suggestions Causes of the Great Depression Students are sometimes perplexed over the causes of the Great Depression. Here is an opportunity to underscore the uncertainties of history. Even today there is no general agreement on the subject. By and large, this text has followed the Keynesian tradition, which places responsibility on the failure of capital investments to expand and the failure of mass purchasing power to keep pace with productivity. Robert Lekachman’s The Age of Keynes presents this argument most lucidly, along with excellent background on the life and theories of economist IM – 23 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

John Maynard Keynes. Though accepted by a majority of historians, the Keynesian explanation is not the only one to gain attention. Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, stress the shrinking money supply from 1929 until early 1933. The failure of the Federal Reserve System to reverse this decline, say monetarists, was the key to what they call “the great contraction.” Peter Temin’s Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? offers the most sophisticated treatment of this point of view.

Chapter 24 The New Deal Learning Objectives • • • • •

Identify the programs which “launched” the New Deal. Describe the criticisms of the New Deal that came from the right and the left, and the FDR administration’s responses. Describe and explain the gains organized labor made during the 1930s. Describe the end of the New Deal. Assess the New Deal’s treatment of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women.

Chapter Overview Franklin D. Roosevelt was bound by traditional economic ideas, but unlike Herbert Hoover, he was willing to experiment with the economy and was able to show compassion to those suffering most desperately from the Depression. During the first two years of his New Deal, the groundwork was laid for a new relationship between government and the economy. Roosevelt sought temporary relief for the unemployed, and long-term recovery and reform measures for industry and finance. Not all of his plan proved effective, and the Depression continued, but Roosevelt got the country moving again. In 1935, frustrated and facing pressures from all sides, Roosevelt launched a new set of programs called the Second New Deal. The new programs were less conciliatory to big business and more favorable to the needs of workers and consumers than were those of the New Deal of 1933. Roosevelt was swept to reelection in 1936 by a new coalition of workers, African Americans, and liberals. Soon, however, Roosevelt’s political blunders in the Supreme Court fight and congressional purge effort combined with growing conservative opposition to halt virtually all New Deal momentum. The legacy of the New Deal was a more activist national government poised to serve as the broker among society’s various interests.

Themes • •

How Franklin Roosevelt, although limited by his basically traditional economic views, pushed through programs of economic planning and Depression relief How popular protests against New Deal policies from rightists, leftists, and those who defied categorization inspired Roosevelt to launch a new burst of action known as the Second New Deal

• •

That, despite Roosevelt’s overwhelming reelection in 1936, the New Deal was virtually moribund by 1938, thanks to increasing conservative opposition, his own political blunders, and continued hard times That the New Deal helped give rise to a new role for the national government as a “broker state” among various organized interests

Lecture Strategies A Thematic Approach to the New Deal The New Deal can be approached either thematically or chronologically. It may be useful to take a more thematic approach in lectures. Recovery, relief, and reform are old chestnuts but still useful in organizing the complex web of New Deal agencies and programs that often leave students confused. Since recovery dominates the early New Deal, it might be best to begin there. After experimenting with economy and currency, the New Deal relied on the NRA and the AAA, which emphasized such New Era techniques as volunteerism, private cooperation, and selfregulation. When those failed (because of faulty conception, internal inconsistencies, or constitutional impediments), the New Deal resorted to piecemeal planning and stricter regulation. It should probably be re-emphasized that Roosevelt was no Keynesian, and that the New Deal never spent enough or encouraged sufficient private investment to achieve recovery. On industrial recovery, see Ellis Hawley’s The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly; on agricultural recovery, see Van Perkins’s Crisis in Agriculture and Donald Worster’s Dust Bowl (especially the section on New Deal agricultural agencies); and on Roosevelt and Keynes, see Robert Lekachman’s The Age of Keynes. New Deal Relief Programs Most of the New Deal relief agencies were intended to be temporary, designed to see Americans through the crisis and to go no further. Early programs stressed doles and local control (e.g., FERA); later ones focused on work relief and federal control (e.g., WPA). Only a few programs, such as Social Security, were institutionalized on a permanent basis. Even these programs, moreover, had limits of coverage and support. The larger notion to stress here is commitment rather than accomplishment. James T. Patterson’s America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century and John Garraty’s Unemployment are excellent studies of the entire problem of poverty and public assistance. The New Deal in Global Context Placing the New Deal within a global context also helps students to understand the restrained nature of its methods and accomplishments, including even its modest reorganization of the presidency. John Garraty’s The Great Depression offers such a perspective, while his “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression” in The American Historical Review (October 1973) presents an intriguing comparison between Roosevelt and the New Deal, and Hitler and National Socialism. For an excellent essay on the place of the New Deal in the spectrum of American liberal reform, see Alan Brinkley’s “The New Deal and the Idea of the State,” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980.

Teaching Suggestions How Revolutionary Was the New Deal? An older question that still animates students is: “How revolutionary was the New Deal?” Historians are less interested in it than they once were, but it furnishes a useful point of departure for analyzing the place of the New Deal in history. Implicit in our discussion is the notion that the New Deal was less revolutionary than it felt at the time. The early New Deal (1933–1934) in particular drew heavily on the legacy of the New Era of the 1920s. Voluntarism, industrial cooperation, and self-regulation were all promoted during the New Era and continued to be important themes in such early New Deal programs as the NRA, AAA, and even the TVA. As Barton Bernstein and other New Left historians have pointed out, moreover, the overall achievements of the New Deal were quite conservative. There was no redistribution of wealth, income, or power, and those at the very bottom—migrant and domestic workers, African Americans, and other disadvantaged minorities—found little change in their circumstances. Yet those quantitative measures fail to capture the genuine sense of movement contemporaries experienced. The invigoration of the presidency, the establishment of the semi-welfare state, the electrification of rural America, the subsidization of labor and other groups—all left Americans feeling as if a momentous change of direction were taking place. For useful material on the sense of change, see Studs Terkel’s Hard Times. The Rise of Demagogues during the New Deal Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, and Dr. Francis Townsend advocated programs that became mass movements in the 1930s. It is in these mass movements (as Alan Brinkley has argued with respect to Long and Coughlin in Voices of Protest) that political and social history intersect. Each touched on a real problem—Long, uneven distribution of wealth; Coughlin, a constricted supply of money; Townsend, the dispossession of the elderly. Each relied on modern techniques of advertising and on modern mass media, particularly the radio. Each offered a simplistic analysis of the problem and an equally simplistic solution to it. Each won devoted followings that saw salvation in the program of their leader. And in the cases of Long and Coughlin, each expressed deep resentments over the intrusion of the industrial state on community life. How dangerous were these movements? How did they reflect deep urges for a lost sense of community in the 1930s? How much did they influence Roosevelt’s turn leftward in 1935?

Chapter 25 The Global Crisis, 1921–1941 Learning Objectives • • •

Describe the diplomatic efforts and agreements of the 1920s and 1930s that responded to global political crises, and evaluate the success of these measures. Explain how and why U.S. foreign policy changed during the 1920s and 1930s. Describe the events which led the U.S. from neutrality to intervention in World War II.

Chapter Overview After World War I, the United States avoided international commitments but not international contact. Relations with Latin America improved but, in Asia and Europe, crises were brewing. The initial American reaction to the aggressive moves of Italy, Germany, and Japan was one of isolationism. Anxious to avoid involvement in another world war, the United States passed a series of Neutrality Acts, but, as the Axis aggressors became bolder, Roosevelt eased the nation closer and closer to war. The attack on Pearl Harbor blew away all isolationist remnants and the nation entered World War II, determined and unified.

Themes • • •

How in the 1920s, the United States tried to increase its role in world affairs, especially economically, while avoiding commitments How America, in the face of growing world crises in the 1930s, turned increasingly toward isolationism and legislated neutrality How war in Europe and Asia gradually drew the United States closer and closer to war, until the attack on Pearl Harbor finally sparked American entry into World War II

Lecture Strategies The Many Facets of the Pearl Harbor Attack By focusing on this crystallizing event to open a lecture, it is possible to look both backward and forward to place World War II in context. First, consider the micro and macro answers to one central question: How did Pearl Harbor happen? The macro answer lies in the rise of the United States as a power in the Pacific basin, the emergence of a Japanese-American rivalry, and the failure of the two nations to reconcile the conflict between the concept of the open door and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. These issues are discussed in essays in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, IM – 25 | 1 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

1931–1941 and Jonathan Utley’s Going to War with Japan. You can gain some insight into the racial dimensions of the question from John Dower’s War Without Mercy. Dower identifies racial stereotypes that led both sides to misjudge the other with tragic consequences. Similarly, while George Waller, ed., Pearl Harbor is no longer fully up-to-date, it contains excerpts from the classic studies—Graebner, Beard, Iriye, Feis—of pre-war diplomacy as well as the American failure to anticipate the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Two essays command special attention: Ladislas Farago supplies fascinating details about Japanese spying at Pearl Harbor and American code-breaking; and Roberta Wohlstetter, in an excerpt from her classic Warning and Decision, explains how the United States could intercept Japanese messages and still not guess that Pearl Harbor was a target.

Teaching Suggestions Causes of the War and American Isolationism In discussing the descent into a second global war, it is probably useful to review some of the settlements at Versailles that disturbed the revisionist nations: heavy reparations and forced disarmament of Germany, the exclusion of the Soviet Union from the League, the failure to recognize Japan’s aspirations in China. You might point out that in the 1980s the Soviet Union and United States found their arms so expensive they began to negotiate disarmament agreements. Similar issues worth discussing are the concepts of neutrality and isolation, especially as a kind of neo-isolation was evident in America from the end of the Vietnam War until Desert Storm. Is it possible to avoid future wars by outlawing the mistakes that led to the previous conflict? What role should the United States have played between the World Wars? Since historians agree that World War II was one of the most formative events in all American history, it is useful to discuss the “lessons” we can learn, as Ernest May explores in “Lessons” of the Past. The three most important are probably Munich and the failure of appeasement; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the idea of “Red Fascism” (the link between totalitarian dictators of the right and left); and Pearl Harbor’s lesson, “to prepare for peace, prepare for war.”

Chapter 26 America in a World at War Learning Objectives • • • •

Describe U.S. actions in World War II. Explain the effect of the war on women, workers, African Americans, Japanese Americans, and immigrants. Specify and evaluate the importance of the U.S. in the Allied victory in Europe. Explain the U.S. reasons for the bombing of civilians in Japan and Europe in the last years of the war.

Chapter Overview The United States entered World War II ideologically unified but militarily ill-prepared. A corporate-government partnership solved most of the production and manpower problems, and the massive wartime output brought an end to the Great Depression. Labor troubles, racial friction, and social tensions were not absent, but they were kept to a minimum. Roosevelt and the American generals made the decision that Germany must be defeated first, since it presented a more serious threat than Japan. Gradually, American production and American military might turned the tide in the Pacific and on the western front in Europe. The key to victory in Europe was the invasion of France, which coincided with the Russian offensive on the eastern front. Less than a year after D-Day, the war in Europe was over. In the Pacific, American forces—with some aid from the British and Australians—first stopped the Japanese advance and then went on the offensive. The strategy for victory involved long leaps from island to island that bypassed and isolated large enemy concentrations and drew progressively closer to the Japanese homeland. Conventional bombing raids pulverized Japanese cities, and American forces were readied for an invasion that the atomic bomb made unnecessary.

Themes • • • •

That the vast productive capacity of the United States was the key to the defeat of the Axis That the war had a profound effect on the home front How three major western offensives combined with an ongoing Russian effort to defeat Germany How sea power contained the Japanese, and how Allied forces moved steadily closer to Japan and prepared for an invasion until the atomic bomb ended the war

Lecture Strategies The Decision to Drop the Bomb From the PBS series The Nuclear Age, the first episode on the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bomb is excellent. Of course, it raises questions about using the bomb. The issue came up among the scientists who built the bomb before Truman even knew that it existed. This might be a better topic on which to end than begin a lecture, but at the preliminary stage you could talk about the concept of total war. Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki any worse than the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo? Were any of these acts warranted or necessary? What do these experiences, along with the Holocaust, suggest about the modern world? Are there, for example, parallels to Bosnia or the Middle East? For the debate over the decision to drop the bomb, look at Martin Sherwin’s A World Destroyed and Michael Stoff’s edited collection, The Manhattan Project: A Documentary History; and also Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy, especially the revised edition. For a source that handles all the above issues in more abbreviated form see “The Decision to Drop the Bomb” in James West Davidson and Mark Lytle’s After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection.

Teaching Suggestions American Concentration Camps Most students are both fascinated and appalled by the issue of concentration camps for Japanese Americans. It is a difficult but worthwhile exercise to compare the experience of Japanese Americans with the treatment of other minorities at home and the Holocaust in Europe. Both the differences and similarities should be informative. The role of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) also raises the ongoing issue of what the government should or should not do to compensate groups for past wrongs and current injustices. Furthermore, given the racial tensions experienced on many college campuses, this is a live issue that deserves frank discussion in historical perspective. Among other topics, it may be useful to consider why war often affords minorities, labor unions, and other groups greater opportunities to advance their social, economic, or political agendas. Assessing the U.S.’s Role Should Roosevelt have sought a fourth term? What could or should the United States have done to aid Europe’s Jews? What powers should the United Nations have been given in order to keep the peace? And last, but far from least, should the United States have dropped atomic bombs on Japan? Or should it have given more warning? Might it have offered a demonstration? And should Truman have told Stalin? These issues are considered well in Martin Sherwin’s A World Destroyed and Michael Stoff’s edited collection, The Manhattan Project: A Documentary History.

Chapter 27 The Cold War Learning Objectives • • • • •

Describe the origins of the Cold War. Discuss how the containment policy influenced the collapse of the postwar peace. Analyze the effect of postwar economic problems on American politics and society. Explain what led to U.S. military action in Korea and the result of that involvement. Explain the reasons for the intense fear of communism that gripped the U.S.

Chapter Overview The mutual hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union grew out of ideological incompatibility and concrete actions stretching back to World War I and before. The alliance of convenience and necessity against Germany temporarily muted the tensions, but disagreement over the timing of the second front and antagonistic visions of postwar Europe pushed the two nations into a “cold war” only a few months after the victory over the Axis. The Cold War was marked by confrontation and the fear of potential military conflict. The United States vowed to contain communism by any means available. Meanwhile, the American people, exhausted from a decade and a half of depression and war, turned away from economic reform. They were worried about the alleged Soviet threat in Europe, especially after Russia exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949. They were dismayed by the communist victory in China and perplexed by the limited war in Korea. Many Americans latched onto charges of domestic communist subversion as an explanation for the nation’s inability to control world events. No one exploited this mood more effectively than Joseph McCarthy.

Themes • • • •

How a legacy of mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union combined with the events of World War II to cause the Cold War How the policy of containment led to an increasing United States involvement in crises around the world How World War II ended the Depression and ushered in an era of nervous prosperity That the turbulent postwar era climaxed in a period of hysterical anticommunism

Lecture Strategies Russian-American Relations The development of the Cold War and an age of bipolar superpowers hinges on the postwar emergence of the United States as the nation most unscathed by World War II. The process through which the U.S. and the Soviet Union went from allies during World War II to bitter enemies is one that tends to grab students’ attention. Was it a foregone conclusion that it had to play out in the way that it did? As one way to dramatize the evolving American position in the Cold War, a lecture might use George Kennan’s Memoirs (Volume 1, 1925–1950) to recreate his perspective (he was actually stationed in Moscow) when he writes his famous letter. The Atomic Age The power that the atomic bomb placed in American hands also redefined the stakes in any future war and the morality of the bomb’s use. At times, President Truman embodied the struggle of the common American trying to comprehend the meaning of the atomic age. Thus, when one military man presented him with an argument for using the bomb, Truman retorted, “You’ve got to understand that this isn’t a military weapon; it is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed civilians....” Yet just as easily, the cold warrior in Truman could lead him to assure those who found him too soft toward the Soviets that no one should doubt his willingness to drop the bomb. The moral issues are well covered in McGeorge Bundy’s Danger and Survival; the strategic in Gregg Herkin’s The Winning Weapon and Fred Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon; and the popular cultural in Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light. Cold War Politics and Television With the adjustment to peace and the growth of a Cold War culture came the rise of television, and a lecture interweaving these dual themes would appeal to students. Among the best sources on the anticommunist crusade is Stephen Whitfield’s The Culture of the Cold War. Most students are surprised that television was not new in the 1940s. The technology had existed since 1927, and in 1939 both NBC and CBS had begun regular broadcasting. Programs included bits of musicals, vaudeville acts, and sports. With the coming of war, skilled personnel and equipment were shifted to military work and broadcasting halted. Yet the war also trained a whole generation of soldiers to work with electronics. Improvements in radar also had applications in television. With peace, television quickly realized its potential as a mass medium. In 1948, the networks assumed an important role in politics, as they covered both the Democratic and Republican conventions. The connection to the domestic Cold War comes in 1950, when broadcasters and advertisers received Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. The pamphlet listed some 151 of the most widely admired and talented names in broadcasting (names students might recognize are Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Judy Holliday, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Pete Seeger, and Orson Welles). Though most had been unjustly accused, well-known stars found suddenly they were “controversial,” and their shows were canceled. Eric Barnouw’s Tube of Plenty is the best source for charting the manifold connections of television, including coverage of the 1950 Kefauver Crime Commission hearings, which dramatized the capacity of the new media to combine entertainment, politics, and news. Emile De Antonio’s Point of Order, a documentary

of the Army-McCarthy hearings, will provide students with a more vivid context than any lecture could convey about McCarthyism and the impact of television.

Teaching Suggestions What Caused the Cold War? The Cold War raises two crucial questions: When did it begin? What caused it—conflicting ideologies, geopolitical rivalries, economic expansion, or some other factor? The answer to the second depends somewhat on the answer to first. If a student suggests 1917, then ideology becomes the central linchpin in a classic view of conflict between liberalism and Bolshevism. If the answer is 1945, geopolitics would seem paramount because of the collapse of Germany, Japan, and the other European powers. You may want to use the text of NSC-68 to explore these issues. It contains the central assumptions about postwar Soviet behavior that shaped the doctrine of containment and anticommunist liberalism generally. For alternate views see Walter LaFeber’s America, Russia, and the Cold War or Thomas Paterson’s On Every Front. John Lewis Gaddis’s Strategies of Containment is excellent on Kennan and containment. The Truman-MacArthur Controversy The Truman-MacArthur controversy is another topic on which the students might want a bit more information to help set in perspective the conflict between civilian and military leaders (point out that the Joint Chiefs backed Truman), and between the European- and Asian-oriented political factions. Since McCarthy was most often associated with the latter, you can make the connection between the Korean War and McCarthyism. Domestic Anticommunism The extent of the anticommunism both at home and abroad should still provoke considerable debate in most classrooms. How real was the threat of subversion? Was there a “clear and present danger” that justified the assault on civil liberties? How do we explain the meteoric rise of Senator McCarthy? Equally important, how did the imposition of a wartime set of institutions, as outlined in NSC-68, affect a nation ostensibly at peace? Given Jefferson’s warnings about standing armies, why was the United States so willing to expand its defense establishment? What does it mean to make covert operations and domestic spying regular aspects of a democratic society? Earl Latham, ed., The Meaning of McCarthyism, has a series of essays that raise provocative questions. The war experience was not the same for women, minorities, and some veterans. You can compare that to the World War I experience, but even more important is to show how the New Deal infrastructure that eased the conversion to war also eased the re-conversion far more smoothly than in 1919–1920. The reaction against the party in power is common (it happened in England as well), as is the shift of power from the executive to legislative branch.

Chapter 28 The Affluent Society Learning Objectives • • • • • • •

Describe the effect of the postwar economic boom on American lifestyles. Identify significant scientific and technological breakthroughs and evaluate the effects of these developments on American life. Describe the lives of the rapidly expanding American middle class. Identify the critics and their critiques of the affluent society of the 1950s. Explain the events which led to the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement in this era. Describe Eisenhower’s republicanism. Describe changes in the Cold War under Eisenhower.

Chapter Overview From the late 1940s through the 1950s, the United States experienced continued economic growth and low unemployment. Most of the nation participated in the prosperity and agreed about the beneficence of American capitalism. Only a few intellectuals questioned the rampant consumerism and the values of the growing corporate bureaucracies. The politics of the period, symbolized by President Eisenhower, the cautious war hero, reflected the popular contentment. African Americans, inspired by the Brown school-desegregation decision, began the protests that would bring the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Locked into a policy of containment and a rigidly dualistic worldview, the United States was less successful in its overseas undertakings. Despite a string of alliances, an awesome nuclear arsenal, and vigorous use of covert operations, the nation often found itself unable to shape world events to conform to American desires.

Themes • • • •

That the technological, consumer-oriented society of the 1950s was remarkably affluent and unified despite the persistence of a less privileged underclass and the existence of a small corps of detractors How the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision of 1954 marked the beginning of a civil rights revolution for African Americans How President Dwight Eisenhower presided over a business-oriented “dynamic conservatism” that resisted most new reforms without significantly rolling back the activist government programs born in the 1930s That while Eisenhower continued to allow containment by building alliances, supporting anticommunist regimes, maintaining the arms race, and conducting limited interventions,

he also showed an awareness of American limitations and resisted temptations for greater commitments

Lecture Strategies Putting the Fifties in Context One approach to treating the fifties is to set it firmly in context, so that students see it not as some aberration or backwater calm unrelated to what precedes or follows it, but as a logical part of the century’s pattern of historical development. The abundance of the fifties is a natural rebound from the constraints of depression and war: the boom in housing, Levittowns, and suburban growth; the boom in babies, education, and the rock ’n’ roll teen culture. And as we shall see, the sixties, with their expressions of revolt and protest, follow naturally from the culture of abundance, affording students an opportunity to think about goals beyond the mere making of a living, and impelling African Americans and other minorities to seek to share in an abundance that became more widespread during the 1950s. Eisenhower and Cold War Confrontation An opening lecture might set the culture of abundance in national and international context; our metaphor for doing this was to see Eisenhower, the man who organized D-Day and a consummate master of the military bureaucracy, as the “organization man” at the center of political affairs. In an age of superpower confrontation, the ideology of brinkmanship heightened the rhetoric of Cold War confrontation (for good material on John Foster Dulles, see Townsend Hoopes’s The Devil and John Foster Dulles), but Eisenhower’s more pragmatic caution lent a moderating brake to Dulles’s hard-line approach. Robert Divine’s Eisenhower and the Cold War provides good background information. One dramatic way to highlight the technological rivalry as well as the political overtones of the superpower confrontation is by focusing on the Sputnik crisis, with good material available in Walter MacDougall’s The Heavens and the Earth. “Organization” Men and Women For the culture of abundance at home, it may be worth expanding in a lecture (or perhaps two) on the dual contrast between the “organization man” in the workplace and the homemaking women of the suburbs. For the first, William Whyte’s Organization Man has a test at the end of the book that could be administered to students, designed to show them how to beat the organization. And of course, the “organization woman” at home—queen of the kitchen, driving the kids to piano lessons, fulfilling herself through motherhood—is vividly described in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. For the underlying material culture of the era, Thomas Hine’s Populuxe provides superb illustrations showing, for example, how the parabola influenced both the design of lawn chairs and Chrysler’s “Forward Look.” There are plenty of visuals here that could be used, illustrating the often delightfully bizarre way this generation expressed abundance through the design of its homes, automobiles, and furniture.

Teaching Suggestions The Significance of the Automobile The automobile was central to society in the 1950s. The impact, however, was different for adolescents than for adults, an issue students may still be sensitive to. Students should also be able to distinguish between physical and social mobility, yet see how the two concepts complement each other. Another comparison worth discussing would be between automobilecentered communities and those built around railroad or trolley lines. What was the difference between the massive public works program like the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system and earlier public works projects under the New Deal? The Suburban Ideal In dealing with suburbia, it is useful to compare the traditional value of detached, single-family dwellings—the new suburban ideal—with prevailing urban realities. How did the concept of civil religion suit the needs of suburban life? Central, too, in the 1950s suburb, was the tension between vestiges of the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity and the suburban version, reincarnated. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is a good source. You can compare the pressures on organization-bound husbands and suburban wives, especially the need for conformity. Eisenhower’s Domestic and Foreign Policies Dwight Eisenhower seems to have been an ideal president for the 1950s, moderate and reassuring. How did his concept of modern Republicanism satisfy the desire to leave New Deal reformism behind? How did his election serve to moderate anticommunist hysteria? In what ways did Eisenhower fail on this issue and on civil rights? You might also emphasize the ways the media distorted many of these issues. In foreign policy, Eisenhower shared the stage with Dulles. Students should be able to identify the ways in which the two men were similar and different in attitudes and strategies. Most important was their call for an offensive approach to containment (brinkmanship). What do students think of this concept, and why did it show such limited results?

Chapter 29 Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the Ordeal of Liberalism Learning Objectives • • • • •

Assess the activist nature of Kennedy’s and Johnson’s administrations. Describe the evolution of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Describe Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Cold War challenges and actions. Explain U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the reasons for growing opposition to the war. Assess the importance of the year 1968 in the world and its effects on U.S. politics.

Chapter Overview The 1960s began with John F. Kennedy squeezing out one of the narrowest presidential victories in U.S. history. Three years later, he was dead, and it was up to Lyndon Johnson to carry through his liberal legacy. The first three years of Johnson’s presidency were legislatively one of the most productive periods ever, as Congress passed many of the civil rights, health, education, and welfare measures of the Great Society. In 1961, the nation bungled an attempt to dislodge Castro from Cuba, and a year and a half later, the world came to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. By the latter half of the decade, the foreign policy focus had moved halfway around the world. By the end of 1967, the United States had 500,000 troops in Southeast Asia, and the Vietnam War had become the central issue of American politics. The election year of 1968 was one of the most turbulent times in the nation’s history.

Themes • • • •

How Lyndon Johnson used the legacy of John Kennedy plus his own political skill to erect his Great Society and fight the war on poverty with programs for health, education, job training, and urban development How the civil rights movement finally generated enough sympathy among whites to accomplish the legal end of segregation, but the persistence of racism gave rise to the “black power” philosophy and left many problems unsolved How containment and the U.S. preoccupation with communism led the nation to use military force against leftist nationalist movements in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and, most disastrously, Vietnam How 1968 became a critical year for American liberalism

Lecture Strategies The Nixon-Kennedy Debates One way to open the era of the 1960s is to look at the Nixon-Kennedy debates. The presidential debates had the greatest impact on previously uncommitted voters, a majority of whom voted in the end for Kennedy. Why had Nixon agreed to debate a candidate so perfectly suited to the television age? Nixon did not want to show fear at meeting his less-experienced opponent headto-head. Besides, he was proud of his skill as a debater. The 1952 televised “Checkers speech” had saved his political career. His reputation had soared after he stood up to Khrushchev in the widely publicized 1959 “kitchen debates” in Moscow. These details and others are well laid out in Eric Barnouw’s Tube of Plenty. Contours of the Civil Rights Movement Certainly, a central explanation for the activism of the 1960s lies in the civil rights movement. It is useful here to turn to Eyes on the Prize either in video or book form. It is especially important to communicate the sense of the courage it took to sit at a segregated lunch counter, enter segregated bus stations, or face down high-pressure water hoses. Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters draws a compelling portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. and his role. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is useful for northern race relations and divisions among black nationalists. Major Interpretations of American Involvement in Vietnam One useful way to begin on Vietnam is to outline the major interpretations of American involvement in the war, as do Paul Joseph’s Cracks in the Empire and George Herring’s America’s Longest War. Joseph lists five positions that correspond to views held during the war and thus explain much of the controversy. The Marxist or radical view, common to the New Left and revisionist historians of the 1960s, emphasizes America’s stake in the region’s resources, its need to keep Southeast Asia open to Japan, and a “rules of the game” theory about sustaining neocolonial systems. The “state intervention” theorists are associated with Seymour Melman, who argued that Vietnam was part of a larger strategy of the military-industrial complex to control ever more resources. It was not capitalists or business but the defense sector that saw advantage in Vietnam.

Teaching Suggestions Evaluating LBJ It is interesting to speculate about Lyndon Johnson. Will history eventually come to weigh his successes more heavily than his shortcomings? Allen Matusow’s The Unraveling of America is especially hard on Johnson and the Great Society programs. Robert Caro’s second volume on Johnson, Means of Ascent, is even more critical. Those should be balanced by Robert Dallek’s Lone Star Rising. By looking at a particular program, a good discussion can bring out the problems in careless conception, untested social theory, organizational confusion, and bureaucratic politics that created problems for virtually all of Johnson’s programs.

The Warren Court Given recent, more conservative decisions by the Supreme Court, students can discuss how the Court under Earl Warren came to take such a central role in reform during the 1960s; why conservatives found the rulings on criminal rights, obscenity, and school prayer so disturbing; and the constitutional basis for major Court decisions. All of the drama and upheaval of the civil rights movement are compactly presented by Juan Williams in his companion book for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize. (The videos themselves are excellent teaching vehicles.) Students should consider the role of civil disobedience and nonviolence. They should also discuss why the great civil rights triumphs of 1964 and 1965 gave way to militancy and violence. One could probably spend the semester discussing the Kennedy assassination, but for most historians the central question must be why the findings of the Warren Commission have failed to satisfy so many people. Why Was the U.S. in Vietnam? Students will need to understand both how and why the United States became involved in the war that so divided the nation. That means some consideration of Ho Chi Minh as both a nationalist and a communist, historical relations between North and South Vietnam as well as between Vietnam and China, the Geneva Accords, U.S. support for Diem, and Kennedy’s fascination with counterinsurgency warfare. The larger picture involves an explanation of Cold War assumptions of the communist monolith that informed the domino theory adopted by Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Other explanations rest on the U.S. desire to keep Southeast Asian markets and resources available to Japan and the emerging Pacific Rim countries. Paul Joseph’s Cracks in the Empire has an introductory chapter that lays out major conflicting interpretations of the war.

Chapter 30 The Crisis of Authority Learning Objectives • • • • • • • •

Describe the youth culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Explain how minorities challenged the status quo in the 1970s. Describe new feminism’s objectives, gains, and setbacks. Explain the powerful emergence of environmentalism in the 1970s. Describe the Vietnam War during Nixon’s administration. Assess Nixon’s shift to a “multipolar” international structure and its impact on U.S. foreign policy. Describe and evaluate Nixon’s response to escalating economic difficulties. Explain the fall of Richard Nixon.

Chapter Overview Opposition to the war in Vietnam became the centerpiece of a wide-ranging political and cultural challenge to traditional American society. During this turbulent era, African Americans, women, Hispanics, and Native Americans organized to assert their rights. Richard Nixon inherited the war in Vietnam, and he brought it to an end. The cost of Nixon’s four years of war was thousands of American lives and many more thousands of Asian lives, plus continued social unrest at home and an enduring strain on the economy. The end of American involvement did not mean that the goal of an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam had been secured. Nixon was more successful in his other foreign policy initiatives, opening meaningful contacts with China and somewhat easing tensions with the Soviet Union. He managed to stake out a solid constituency of conservative voters with his attacks on liberal programs and ideas. He never quite decided how to deal with a troubled economy that faced the unusual dual problem of slowed growth and rapidly rising prices. Less than two years after his overwhelming reelection in 1972, Nixon resigned from office under fire from a nation horrified by his arrogant misuse of presidential power for personal political purposes in the Watergate affair. Meanwhile, with the Vietnam War behind them, Americans began to look to other issues, particularly the environment, and raise more questions about the quality of life on our planet.

Themes •

How Richard Nixon gradually reduced the American ground forces in Vietnam but increased the air war as he and Henry Kissinger sought peace with honor, which turned out to be nothing more than a way for the United States to leave the war with a decent interval before North Vietnam’s victory IM – 30 | 1

• • • • • •

That Nixon and Kissinger believed that stability in a “multipolar” world could be achieved only by having the United States forge a bold new relationship with China and, at the same time, seek a détente with the Soviet Union through arms reductions That Nixon’s efforts to build a policy of less federal dominance of the states and more respect for traditional values reaped more political gain than practical result How movements by youth, ethnic minorities, and women challenged social norms That Nixon’s inconsistent economic policies failed to solve “stagflation,” which was as much international as domestic in origin How Nixon’s fear of opposition and assumption that his own fortunes were identical to those of the nation led to his downfall through the scandals collectively known as Watergate How the environment became an issue in American life

Lecture Strategies Exploring the Counterculture Students are generally fascinated with all elements of the counterculture. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s Acid Dreams provides a fascinating story of the CIA’s role in popularizing LSD, and then in the various countercultural uses and abuses to which it was put in the transcendental hands of Timothy Leary, or the hedonistic rampages of Ken Kesey and his pranksters. Acid Dreams is useful because it ties LSD into central values of American society in the sixties and offers an explanation for the collapse of the counterculture. On rock ’n’ roll, Ed Ward et al., Rock of Ages: The History of Rock and Roll, is useful; and John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s Intimate Matters places the sexual revolution in a broader context. The Quagmire Theory The quagmire theory, first propounded by David Halberstam, is probably the most widely held: that various bureaucrats misled presidents, often telling them what they wanted to hear instead of the truth. Thus, the war can be explained as a series of mistakes and misjudgments. An intriguing but less plausible theory came from Leslie Gelb. He suggested that each president, from Truman to Nixon, approached Vietnam as a war they were neither willing to sacrifice to win nor willing to lose. “The system worked,” Gelb explains, in that each president supported the war only as much as it took not to lose. Finally, conservatives have argued that the war could have been won—if a hostile media and traitorous antiwar movement had not undermined public morale, or if wavering politicians had given the military the resources and authority it needed to win. Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie is probably the most powerful indictment of that thesis yet written. The Psychologies of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger Thus far the most revealing treatments of Richard Nixon’s character and worldview come in Garry Wills’s Nixon Agonistes and Stephen Ambrose’s Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972. Wills’s image of a discotheque in Whittier, California, as Quakerism-a-go-go is priceless, as is the vivid ways he depicts Nixon as the ideal candidate for the lowered IM – 30 | 2 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

expectations of 1968. There is no brief way to get a handle on Henry Kissinger, but Walter Isaacson’s biography is rich with insight and gossipy details. The Environmental Movement The environmental movement helps to demonstrate to students that grassroots social movements did not disappear at the close of the 1960s. Excellent sources for the environmental movement are Sam Hays’s Beauty, Health, and Permanence and the later chapters of Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind. The case studies presented by Barry Commoner in The Closing Circle each present a morality tale of environmental folly and hope.

Teaching Suggestions The 1968 Election and Nixon How had Richard Nixon revived a totally discredited political career? Nixon remains one of the most fascinating political personages of recent times. It is important to deal both with his selfdestructive qualities and his capacity for greatness. Much of his domestic program, on close examination, looks more moderate or liberal than critics have ever conceded. Against that stands the secret bombings and of course Watergate. One way to bring Nixon out is through his relationship with Kissinger. Walter Isaacson’s Kissinger is wonderfully revealing about both men and their shared vision of the need to realign American global commitments. Finally, students should consider what the Vietnam War cost the United States in the larger sense so they appreciate what “post-Vietnam syndrome” means in the 1970s. Perspectives on Watergate Watergate and Richard Nixon’s fall make great dramatic material, on a subject that has receded into the distant past for most students. J. Anthony Lukas’s Nightmare is excellent for details. Of all the various insider accounts, many of them self-serving, none tops John Dean’s Blind Ambition. He noticed much, and reveals more than he intends. Students could well identify with his not-so-innocent plunge into the moral abyss surrounding him. Theodore White’s Breach of Faith, by a veteran student of the presidency, is good on some of the larger issues of Watergate. Walter Isaacson’s Kissinger provides another perspective.

Chapter 31 From the “Age of Limits” to the Age of Reagan Learning Objectives • • • •

Evaluate the efforts of the Ford and Carter administrations to repair the damage done to the office of the president. Describe how and why the American electorate became more conservative during the 1970s and 1980s. Identify which groups united to constitute the Reagan coalition, and explain which beliefs were shared by these diverse sectors. Describe the philosophy that guided Reagan in his foreign policy and the influences on that policy by the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Chapter Overview As president, Gerald Ford worked to heal the wounds of Watergate and restore respect for the presidency. His pardon of Richard Nixon was probably the most controversial act of his caretaker period in office. Jimmy Carter turned out to be a more effective campaigner than president. His administration was marked by an inability to set a tone of leadership. He made no significant strides toward solving the energy crisis and took only halting steps toward his goal of making the federal government more efficient. His last year in office was dominated by the Iranian hostage crisis, which at first boosted his popularity but later may have cost him another term. An upsurge in conservatism came from demographic shifts to the Sunbelt, the activism of the Christian right, the ideology of the neo-conservatives, and effective organizational tactics. Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election by riding this conservative crest and by exploiting deepseated feelings of resentment over America’s seeming weakness abroad. Congress quickly passed his supply-side economics plan of tax reductions and spending cuts; however, a year later, the nation was mired in recession. Prosperity returned and Reagan won easy reelection. By now the Cold War, which had shaped national priorities since World War II, was waning. With the fall of the Soviet Union domestic issues again took center stage, and President George H. W. Bush, who followed Reagan, faced serious economic problems. At the same time, foreign policy concerns shifted again to the Middle East, and though operation Desert Storm successfully stopped Iraqi aggression, that victory did not solve the problems of the region.

Themes •

That Gerald Ford managed to restore confidence in the presidency but remained unable to make significant breakthroughs in solving the nation’s international and economic problems IM – 31 | 1

• • • •

That the difficult problems faced by Jimmy Carter, including a sluggish economy, an energy crunch, and a Middle Eastern crisis, combined with his leadership style to ensure that he would be a one-term president That Ronald Reagan’s personality soothed Americans, and his brand of conservatism struck a responsive chord as he moved toward a reduced role for government in the economy and an increased emphasis on the military How the New Right challenged the liberal-moderate consensus that had dominated American politics since the New Deal How the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War altered America’s foreign policy and domestic goals, and turned the focus of American foreign policy to other matters, especially in the Middle East

Lecture Strategies Deregulation and the Environment “Environment” was a dirty word in the Reagan-Bush years. Western conservatives especially see environmental regulations as an assault on freedom and the embodiment of interventionist government. The determination of Al Gore to promote environmental issues promises to keep the debate alive. His book Earth in the Balance and the third edition of Roderick Nash, ed., American Environmentalism are good places to find controversial views. The PATCO Strike and the Death of the New Deal Consensus The postwar period was notable for the high level of cooperation among the federal government, big labor, and big business. While this arrangement began to fray under Nixon, it was dealt a fatal blow by the Reagan administration. Getting students to understand this critical shift in the federal government’s position in relation to organized labor is critical. Most emblematic of Reagan’s effort to destroy the postwar gains of big labor was the way he dealt with the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981. Ironically, the union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), had departed from its tradition and endorsed Reagan, a Republican, in the 1980 election. When PATCO struck in 1981 for better working conditions, Reagan was determined to make an example of the union. Organized labor was sent a clear message when Reagan ordered the strikers to return to work in 48 hours. When the vast majority did not, Reagan fired over 11,000 controllers. Debating the Reagan-Bush Years There will long be debate over the accomplishments and failures of the Reagan-Bush years. Haynes Johnson’s Sleepwalking Through History is probably the best book on the Reagan presidency. Andrew Hacker’s Two Nations dramatically exposes the failure of the nation to reconcile the issue of race. Dilip Hiro’s Desert Shield to Desert Storm: The Second Gulf War offers a hostile but comprehensive history of the Gulf War.

Teaching Suggestions The Ford Presidency The Ford presidency raises the question of the pardon. Students should enjoy speculating on why Ford did it and why it cost him so much politically. The period also brings Kissinger centerstage. The Kissinger quote on order and justice (“If I had to choose between justice and disorder on the one hand, and injustice and order on the other, I would always choose the latter”) is worth discussing. It would be interesting to ask whether Kissinger could have as easily made the same comment in a specifically domestic context. The OPEC-inspired energy crises invite students to see the political and strategic problems inherent in dependence on foreign resources. Also, discussion could bring out the degree of American dependence on energy-intensive technology. The Carter Years The Carter presidency raises particularly intriguing questions. Did the outsider status that helped Carter into the White House doom him to frustration? How much did events outside his control, like the Iranian Revolution, make him appear a weaker president than he was? The split on foreign policy—Cold War hard-line versus negotiation and moderation—raises important questions about the proper direction of foreign policy. And Reagan’s later frustration over hostages, which led to the abortive weapons deals with Iran, places Carter in an altered light. Finally, how well is the United States prepared to face another energy crisis after ten years of grace? The Carter years invite summation by asking how much the troubles came from personal shortcomings and how much was an inevitable backlash against what Arthur Schlesinger described as the “Imperial Presidency.” The Meaning of the Mall The chapter raises an issue that most students should be able to readily address from their personal experience: the role of malls in contemporary culture. Is it true that retail space replaced religious and civic space as the place for the public to gather? If so, what does that say about modern American society? Moreover, has the mall now been replaced with the onset of Internet shopping, or with the “superstore” phenomenon? If so, how might that further affect society? Religion and Conservative Politics Discussion of religious issues obviously requires discretion and tact. Yet the religious domain remains one in which issues and values are hotly contested. Garry Wills’s collection of essays, Under God, addresses a variety of issues worth covering. Steve Bruce’s The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right and Peter Steinfels’ The Neo-Conservatives are also worthwhile. It is important that students recognize the varieties of evangelical religions, and the existence of conservative and fundamentalist crusades among Jews and Catholics as well. The Role of the U.S. in Ending the Cold War Historians will be debating how significant the role of the United States was in ending the Cold War for some time. Did the Reagan military buildup of the 1980s have an impact, or was it mostly a matter of Gorbachev’s internal reforms? John Lewis Gaddis’s We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History will help set up the parameters of the debate.

Chapter 32 The Age of Globalization Learning Objectives • • • • • • •

Describe the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies and their accomplishments and setbacks. Identify the causes of the economic boom of the last three decades of the twentieth century. Describe the digital revolution and its influence on the economy, politics, and society in the United States. Analyze the ways in which U.S. society has changed in the age of globalization. Describe the new controversies which emerged in the U.S. by the end of the twentieth century. Describe how America’s relationship to the rest of the world changed as a result of the war on terrorism. Identify the principal achievements and challenges of George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s administrations.

Chapter Overview With the Cold War over, the economy became Americans’ main concern; it was the economy that had led to George H. W. Bush’s defeat in 1992. The new president, Bill Clinton, set out to reverse many Reagan-Bush policies. As a result, with neither Democrats nor Republicans dominating the government, partisan politics became bitter. Issues such as the “graying” of America, population diversity, and differing cultural values were, to many people, more important than defining our role in the post–Cold War era. The president himself became an issue, was impeached, and though acquitted, remained embattled. Despite a booming economy, Republicans regained the White House in 2000 when, by the narrowest of margins, George W. Bush, son of the former president, became president in his own right. Not long after he took office, however, the American economy, which had grown rapidly with the expanding technology market, began to slow, and the second Bush administration found itself facing serious domestic problems. Bush won re-election in 2004, again by a narrow margin, and launched an ambitious agenda, but continuing economic sluggishness and a public unwilling to dismantle some of the nation’s social-safety net left many of his plans unfulfilled. As the nation confronted the problems that accompanied the emergence of a technology-driven global economy, old issues and old hatreds brought conflict to the Balkans and to the Middle East. Finally, one of these conflicts came to our shores. On September 11, 2001, Islamic militants took control of four airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth crashed in a field not far from Pittsburgh. Within weeks of the attacks, American troops invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of IM – 32 | 1 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

terrorist organizations, and in March 2003 the United States launched an invasion of Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, which some had accused of building weapons of mass destruction. After two months of battle, Bush declared “mission accomplished,” but in fact, the war would continue for six more years, costing the lives of close to 4,200 soldiers. With a struggling economy that had declined further into the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the continuation of increasingly unpopular and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an ever-more-polarized political climate, the nation’s first African American president entered the White House with enormously high expectations. Unsurprisingly, many were disappointed in Democrat Barack Obama’s first two years, no doubt a contributing factor in the significant setback for Democrats in the 2010 elections. The problems of polarized government and incompatible ideologies continued to plague the nation.

Themes • • • • • • • • • • • •

How Bill Clinton won the presidency by focusing on the economy, and though the Republican Party rebounded in 1994, Clinton was re-elected in 1996 How the 1990s was both a decade of intense party partisanship and rapid economic expansion That George W. Bush used his victories in 2000 and 2004 as a means to promote tax cuts and a conservative social agenda That fundamental changes in the United States and world economy led to significant changes in lifestyle and expectations for middle-class Americans That during this period a technology-driven, global economy emerged to shape relations between nations That America was becoming more diverse due to the changes in immigration after 1965 and the higher birth rates among many immigrant groups, especially Hispanics That the civil rights movement, affirmative action, and other liberal reforms had left a legacy of improved opportunities for educated middle-class blacks, but the urban African American “underclass” seemed even worse off than before That the nation, despite its prosperity, continued to face a rising number of seemingly intractable social problems including violent crime, drug addiction, homelessness, AIDS, environmental hazards, and a deprived underclass That some Americans came to believe that defining American culture and its values was the most important problem facing the nation That while globalization had its advantages, it also had its perils, as ancient conflicts began to involve more people and more nations That the events of September 11, 2001 awakened America to a new wariness and a new unity, and led to a war on terrorism that many contend poses a threat to civil liberties How the high expectations accompanying the election of President Barack Obama immediately came up against enormous challenges both old and new, resulting in disappointments and political backlash

Lecture Strategies Contrasting the Reagan-Bush Administration with the Clinton Years Clearly, many of Bill Clinton’s early policies on health-care, the environment, gays in the military, abortion rights, and other social issues repudiate the agenda of the Reagan-Bush years. A good lecture might contrast the heady enthusiasm of conservatives in the early Reagan years with the gusto the Clintons brought to Washington. Further, there is a marked contrast between Clinton’s hands-on, activist love of policy and politics with Reagan’s hands-off style. These can easily be connected with other presidencies in the century to pull major themes together—the activist presidency/government, the centralization of power, the government as advocate for the less fortunate, and the current state of the liberal-conservative debate. The New Immigration in Context Immigration is one issue that attracts recurrent attention. It might be worth returning to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century to show how Americans remain uncertain about who they have been, are at present, and might be in the future as a people. Sociologist Nancy Foner’s From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration might be helpful in setting up this comparison. It provides a comparison between the great wave of Jewish and Italian immigrants to New York at the turn of the last century and the present wave of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. A lecture that traces the immigration and settlement patterns of one particular post-1965 ethnic group, such as the Hmong people of Southeast Asia, might also be of interest to students. The clashing of the concern over border security with the idea of the United States as a refuge for persecuted and economically disadvantaged peoples has intensified the debate over immigration in recent years. A discussion about the kinds of rights that should be extended to undocumented immigrants should bear fruitful results if handled tactfully. National Security versus Civil Rights Remind students that Abraham Lincoln used his executive power to suspend the right to habeas corpus during the Civil War. To what extent should individual rights be sacrificed in moments of danger? What kind of controls should be put on the government’s ability to make such decisions? Geoffrey R. Stone’s Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism might be helpful in providing the long-term context on one particular aspect of this issue.

Teaching Suggestions Universal Health-Care Why did the Clinton administration’s 1993 effort to universalize health insurance fail in such a spectacular fashion? Why was there so much opposition to such a seemingly positive piece of legislation? To help frame this discussion and put it into broader historical context, you might want to take a look at Colin Gordon’s Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth-Century America, which pays particular attention to the efforts of the powerful lobbies of the American Medical Association and health insurance industry to steer America away from IM – 32 | 3 Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

such a program. Students will also benefit from a study of the health-care debate in the presidential campaigns of 2008, and efforts made by the Obama administration to address deficiencies in the health-care system. It will also be fruitful to look at changing public opinion on these current efforts. Proposition 187 A lecture on this 1994 California ballot initiative, sponsored by Republican assemblyman Dick Mountjoy, might be useful. The measure, which attempted to outlaw illegal immigrants from receiving any public benefits, garnered national attention and prompted support for similar bills in Illinois, Florida, New York, and Texas. Proposition 187 passed in California, receiving almost a 59-percent majority of the votes, but was overturned later by a federal court. The campaign employed overtly racist tactics, stating that the legislation was needed to prevent the “browning” of California. The state has had a long tradition of using legislation to restrict immigration along racial lines and deny the rights of recent immigrants. For example, the situation in California in the 1870s led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the federal level in 1882. Drawing parallels between these two situations might be helpful, as might reminding students of the historical irony that California had been a province of Mexico up until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. A New Vietnam? Comparing the Iraq war launched in 2003 with the American intervention in Vietnam might lead to a productive classroom discussion. Is Iraq Another Vietnam?, a lucid book by historian Robert K. Brigham, might be helpful in shaping the conversation. As Brigham writes, “The United States seems to have come full circle. Once again it finds itself engaged in a war characterized by no clear boundaries, no clear exit strategy, no definition of victory, little allied support, no UN authority, growing public unrest, rising costs, and perhaps an inadequate number of troops for the job.”