1st Edition

The United States, 1865-1920 Reuniting a Nation

By Adam Burns Copyright 2020
    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    The United States, 18651920: Reuniting a Nation explores how the U.S. attempted to heal Civil War-era divisions, as well as maintain and strengthen its unity as new rifts developed in the conflict’s aftermath.

    Taking a broadly thematic approach to the period, Adam Burns examines the development of the United States from political, social, and foreign relations perspectives. Concise and accessible, the volume uses a variety of primary source documents to help stimulate discussion and encourage the use of historical evidence as support for different interpretations of the era.

    By exploring controversies over issues such as citizenship, ethnicity, regionalism, and economic disparity, all of which resonate strongly in the nation’s political discourse today, the book will be an important staple for undergraduate students of American History and the period that followed the Civil War, as well as general enthusiasts.

    List of illustrations

    Acknowledgements

    Chronology

    Who’s who

     

    PART I ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

     

    1 INTRODUCTION

    2 RECONSTRUCTING A NATION

    Reconstruction from Lincoln to Johnson

    Congressional Reconstruction

    Grant’s Reconstruction

    3 THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION

    African American rights secured?

    White resistance

    Rebuilding a white South

    A New South?

    4 THE COURSE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

    Connecting the West

    Native Americans

    Life in the West

    5 PARTY POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE

    Reestablishing Republican governance

    Republican factionalism grows

    The Cleveland era

    6 ROBBER BARONS AND KNIGHTS OF LABOR

    Technology

    The robber barons

    Agrarian reaction

    Urban reaction

    7 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

    Relations with the European empires

    Relations with Latin American nations

    Relations with the Asia-Pacific region

    8 IMMIGRATION, ETHNICITY, AND THE CHANGING FACE OF THE NATION

    Scientific racism

    Immigration and new minorities

    The growth of black activism

    9 BRYAN, ROOSEVELT, AND THE EVOLUTION OF PARTY POLITICS

    Populism and the rise of William Jennings Bryan

    The progressive movement

    Theodore Roosevelt: the accidental president

    Taft and the Republican split of 1912

    10 WILSON AND THE GREAT WAR

    The New Freedom: domestic affairs before the war

    Wilson, Latin America, and neutrality

    The end of neutrality and peace without victory

    The home front

    11 CONCLUSION: THE ELECTION OF 1920 AND THE END OF AN ERA

     

     

    PART II DOCUMENTS

     

    1 Abraham Lincoln – "The Gettysburg Address" (1863)

    2 Frederick Douglass – "What the Black Man Wants" (1865)

    3 Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1868)

    4 Andrew Johnson – Veto Message Regarding Rebel State Governments (1867)

    5 "Civil Rights of Freedmen in Mississippi" (1865)

    6 Tom Watson – "The Negro Question in the South" (1892)

    7 Booker T. Washington – "Atlanta Compromise" Speech (1895)

    8 Sitting Bull – Testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee (1883)

    9 Frederick Jackson Turner – "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)

    10 Rutherford B. Hayes – Presidential Inaugural Address (1877)

    11 "To Republicans and Independent Voters" (1884)

    12 Populist Party Platform (1892)

    13 Andrew Carnegie – "Wealth" (1889)

    14 Samuel Gompers – Testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor (1883)

    15 Theodore Roosevelt – Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904)

    16 John Hay – The First "Open Door" Note (1899)

    17 Philippine Declaration of Independence (1898)

    18 Thomas Dixon – The Leopard’s Spots (1902)

    19 Reports of the Dillingham Immigration Committee (1910)

    20 W. E. B. Du Bois – "The Talented Tenth" (1903)

    21 William Jennings Bryan – "Cross of Gold" Speech (1896)

    22 Theodore Roosevelt – "The Man with the Muck-rake" (1906)

    23 Woodrow Wilson – Address to Congress Leading to a War against Germany (1917)

    24 Carrie Chapman Catt – Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment (1917)

    Glossary

    Guide to further reading

    References

    Index

    Biography

    Adam Burns is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of American Imperialism (2017) and William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire (2020).

    "In this short but sharp overview of the United States between the Civil War and the end of the First World War, Adam Burns has delineated a crisp and clear chronological map of the major political and social changes of the era. Without deviating from the trajectory of disunion and reunification that drives the narrative, one largely shaped by the political and racial ramifications of Reconstruction and beyond, Burns guides us through what was by any standards a complex and often convoluted period in America’s history. In a market saturated by textbook treatments of America's history, Burns's study stands out for the clarity both of its style and its approach, but mostly for its coverage of a period that, located between two major conflicts too often finds itself lost between them. Supported by a range of primary documents clearly linked to the book's driving arguments, this is a work that will be of immense value to students at A-level and those undertaking undergraduate programmes in American History."

    Susan-Mary Grant, Professor of American History at Newcastle University. Among numerous books and articles, she is the author of The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (Routledge, 2006), A Concise History of the United States of America (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Routledge, 2016).

     

    "A timely volume in the "Seminar Studies" series, this compact narrative weaves familiar content around important and relevant themes, notably how racism and ethnicity shaped the terrain of Reconstruction, national politics, economic transformation, immigration, and international relations after the Civil War when the US emerged as a global power. White cultural predilections and interests bounded the clashes over incorporation, industrialization, and the fierce electoral battles that characterized the 55 years after Appomattox. The postbellum US that Burns (Univ. of Wolverhampton, UK) details evolved into a nation almost as divided as it was during the Civil War [...] This engaging text is clearly linked to primary and secondary sources, and the inclusion of a glossary, chronology, documentary collection, and current bibliographic essay make it especially useful in college classroom settings. Burns’s narrative will engage general readers as well."

    --E. R. Crowther, emeritus, Adams State University

    Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty.