The Confederate Army did well in the early part of the war, and some of
its commanders, especially General Robert E. Lee, were brilliant
tacticians. But the Union had superior manpower and resources to draw upon.
In the summer of 1863 Lee took a gamble by marching his troops north into
Pennsylvania. He met a Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle
ever fought on American soil ensued. After three days of desperate
fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the
Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the city of
Vicksburg, giving the North control of the entire Mississippi Valley and
splitting the Confederacy in two.
Two years later, after a long campaign involving forces commanded by Lee
and Grant, the Confederates surrendered. The Civil War was the most
traumatic episode in American history. But it resolved two matters that had
vexed Americans since 1776. It put an end to slavery, and it decided that
the country was not a collection of semi-independent states but an
indivisible whole.
THE LATE 19TH CENTURY
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, depriving America of a leader
uniquely qualified by background and temperament to heal the wounds left by
the Civil War. His successor, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner who had
remained loyal to the Union during the war. Northern members of Johnson's
own party (Republican) set in motion a process to remove him from office
for allegedly acting too leniently toward former Confederates. Johnson's
acquittal was an important victory for the principle of separation of
powers: A president should not be removed from office because Congress
disagrees with his policies, but only if he has committed, in the words of
the Constitution, "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors."
Within a few years after the end of the Civil War, the United States
became a leading industrial power, and shrewd businessmen made great
fortunes. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869; by
1900 the United States had more rail mileage than all of Europe. The
petroleum industry prospered, and John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil
Company became one of the richest men in America. Andrew Carnegie, who
started out as a poor Scottish immigrant, built a vast empire of steel
mills. Textile mills multiplied in the South, and meat-packing plants
sprang up in Chicago, Illinois. An electrical industry flourished as
Americans made use of a series of inventions: the telephone, the light
bulb, the phonograph, the alternating-current motor and transformer, motion
pictures. In Chicago, architect Louis Sullivan used steel-frame
construction to fashion America's distinctive contribution to the modern
city: the skyscraper.
But unrestrained economic growth brought dangers. To limit competition,
railroads merged and set standardized shipping rates. Trusts -- huge
combinations of corporations -- tried to establish monopoly control over
some industries, notably oil. These giant enterprises could produce goods
efficiently and sell them cheaply, but they could also fix prices and
destroy competitors. To counteract them, the federal government took
action. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to control
railroad rates. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 banned trusts, mergers,
and business agreements "in restraint of trade."
Industrialization brought with it the rise of organized labor. The
American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886, was a coalition of trade
unions for skilled laborers. The late 19th century was a period of heavy
immigration, and many of the workers in the new industries were foreign-
born. For American farmers, however, times were hard. Food prices were
falling, and farmers had to bear the costs of high shipping rates,
expensive mortgages, high taxes, and tariffs on consumer goods.
With the exception of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, American
territory had remained fixed since 1848. In the 1890s a new spirit of
expansion took hold. The United States followed the lead of northern
European nations in asserting a duty to "civilize" the peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. After American newspapers published lurid
accounts of atrocities in the Spanish colony of Cuba, the United States and
Spain went to war in 1898. When the war was over, the United States had
gained a number of possessions from Spain: Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto
Rico, and Guam. In an unrelated action, the United States also acquired the
Hawaiian Islands.
Yet Americans, who had themselves thrown off the shackles of empire, were
not comfortable with administering one. In 1902 American troops left Cuba,
although the new republic was required to grant naval bases to the United
States. The Philippines obtained limited self-government in 1907 and
complete independence in 1946. Puerto Rico became a self-governing
commonwealth within the United States, and Hawaii became a state in 1959
(as did Alaska).
THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
While Americans were venturing abroad, they were also taking a fresh look
at social problems at home. Despite the signs of prosperity, up to half of
all industrial workers still lived in poverty. New York, Boston, Chicago,
and San Francisco could be proud of their museums, universities, and public
libraries -- and ashamed of their slums. The prevailing economic dogma had
been laissez faire: let the government interfere with commerce as little as
possible. About 1900 the Progressive Movement arose to reform society and
individuals through government action. The movement's supporters were
primarily economists, sociologists, technicians, and civil servants who
sought scientific, cost-effective solutions to political problems.
Social workers went into the slums to establish settlement houses, which
provided the poor with health services and recreation. Prohibitionists
demanded an end to the sale of liquor, partly to prevent the suffering that
alcoholic husbands inflicted on their wives and children. In the cities,
reform politicians fought corruption, regulated public transportation, and
built municipally owned utilities. States passed laws restricting child
labor, limiting workdays, and providing compensation for injured workers.
Some Americans favored more radical ideologies. The Socialist Party, led
by Eugene V. Debs, advocated a peaceful, democratic transition to a state-
run economy. But socialism never found a solid footing in the United States
-- the party's best showing in a presidential race was 6 percent of the
vote in 1912.
WAR AND PEACE
When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson urged
a policy of strict American neutrality. Germany's declaration of
unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships bound for Allied ports
undermined that position. When Congress declared war on Germany in 1917,
the American army was a force of only 200,000 soldiers. Millions of men had
to be drafted, trained, and shipped across the submarine-infested Atlantic.
A full year passed before the U.S. Army was ready to make a significant
contribution to the war effort.
By the fall of 1918, Germany's position had become hopeless. Its armies
were retreating in the face of a relentless American buildup. In October
Germany asked for peace, and an armistice was declared on November 11. In
1919 Wilson himself went to Versailles to help draft the peace treaty.
Although he was cheered by crowds in the Allied capitals, at home his
international outlook was less popular. His idea of a League of Nations was
included in the Treaty of Versailles, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify
the treaty, and the United States did not participate in the league.
The majority of Americans did not mourn the defeated treaty. They turned
inward, and the United States withdrew from European affairs. At the same
time, Americans were becoming hostile to foreigners in their midst. In 1919
a series of terrorist bombings produced the "Red Scare." Under the
authority of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, political meetings were
raided and several hundred foreign-born political radicals were deported,
even though most of them were innocent of any crime. In 1921 two Italian-
born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of
murder on the basis of shaky evidence. Intellectuals protested, but in 1927
the two men were electrocuted. Congress enacted immigration limits in 1921
and tightened them further in 1924 and 1929. These restrictions favored
immigrants from Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries.
The 1920s were an extraordinary and confusing time, when hedonism
coexisted with puritanical conservatism. It was the age of Prohibition: In
1920 a constitutional amendment outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Yet drinkers cheerfully evaded the law in thousands of "speakeasies"
(illegal bars), and gangsters made illicit fortunes in liquor. It was also
the Roaring Twenties, the age of jazz and spectacular silent movies and
such fads as flagpole-sitting and goldfish-swallowing. The Ku Klux Klan, a
racist organization born in the South after the Civil War, attracted new
followers and terrorized blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. At the
same time, a Catholic, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, was a Democratic
candidate for president.
For big business, the 1920s were golden years. The United States was now a
