French Indian War

1. French Indian War • The French consoled themselves with the thought that if they could lose such a great empire, maybe the British would one day lose theirs too. ii. Spain was eliminated from Florida, and the Indians could no longer play the European powers against each other, since it was only Great Britain in control now. iii. In 1763, Ottawa Chief Pontiac led a few French-allied tribes in a brief but bloody campaign through the Ohio Valley, but the whites quickly and cruelly retaliated after being caught off guard. • a. One commander ordered blankets infected with smallpox to be distributed. • b. The violence convinced whites to station troops along the frontier. iv. Now, land-hungry Americans could now settle west of the Appalachians, but in 1763, Parliament issued its Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting any settlement in the area beyond the Appalachians. • a. Actually, this document was meant to work out the Indian problem by drawing the “out-of-bounds” line. But, colonists saw it as another form of oppression from a far away country. Americans asked, “Didn’t we just fight a war to win that land?” • b. In 1765, an estimated one thousand wagons rolled through the town of Salisbury, North Carolina, on their way “up west” in defiance of the Proclamation.

2. Bacon’s Rebellion • By the late 1600s, there were lots of free, poor, landless, single men frustrated by the lack of money, land, work, and women. ii. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a few thousand of these men in a rebellion against the hostile conditions. • 1. These people wanted land and were resentful of Virginia governor William Berkeley’s friendly policies toward the Indians. • 2. Bacon’s men murderously attacked Indian settlements after Berkeley refused to retaliate for a series of savage Indian attacks on the frontier. iii. Then, in the middle of his rebellion, Bacon suddenly died of disease, and Berkeley went on to crush the uprising. • 1. Still, Bacon’s legacy lived on, giving frustrated poor folks ideas to rebel, and so a bit of paranoia went on for some time afterwards.

3. Articles of Confederation i. The main thing to know regarding the Articles is that they set up a very weak government. This was not by accident, but by plan. The reason a weak government was desired was simply to avoid a strong national government that would take away unalienable rights or abuse their power (i.e. England). ii. The Articles had no executive branch (hence, no single leader), a weak Congress in which each state had only one vote, it required 2/3 majority on any subject of importance, and a fully unanimous vote for amendments. iii. Also, Congress was pitifully weak, and could not regulate commerce and could not enforce tax collection. • 1. States printed their own, worthless paper money. • 2. States competed with one another for foreign trade. The federal government was helpless. iv. Congress could only call up soldiers from the states, which weren’t going to help each other. • 1. Example: in 1783, a group of Pennsylvanian soldiers harassed the government in Philadelphia, demanding back pay. When it pleaded for help from the state, and didn’t receive any, it had to shamefully move to Princeton College in New Jersey. v. However, the government was a model of what a loose confederation should be, and was a significant stepping-stone towards the establishment of the U.S. Constitution. vi. Still, many thought the states wielded an alarmingly great of power.

4. Continental Congress’ • 1st Continental Congress: • a. In Philadelphia, from September 5th to October 26th, 1774, the First Continental Congress met to discuss problems. • b. While not wanting independence yet, it did come up with a list of grievances, which were ignored in Parliament. • c. 12 of the 13 colonies met, only Georgia didn’t have a representative there. • d. Also, they came up with a Declaration of Rights. • 2nd Continental Congress: met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, with no real intention of independence, but merely a desire to continue fighting in the hope that the king and Parliament would consent to a redress of grievances. • 1. It sent another list of grievances to Parliament. • 2. It also adopted measures to raise money for an army and a navy. • 3. It also selected George Washington to command the army. • a. Washington had never risen above the rank of colonel, and his largest command had only been of 1,200 men, but he was a tall figure who looked like a leader, and thus, was a morale boost to troops. • b. He radiated patience, courage, self-discipline, and a sense of justice, and though he insisted on working without pay, he did keep a careful expense account amounting to more than $100,000.

5. Land Acquisitions • Gadsden Purchase: The Gadsden Purchase was the 1853 treaty in which the United States bought from Mexico parts of what is now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico. Southerners wanted this land in order to build southern transcontinental railroad, it also showed the American belief in Manifest Destiny. The heated debate over this issue in the Senate demonstrates the prevalence of sectional disagreement. • Seward’s Folly: Secretary of State William Seward's negotiation of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. At the time everyone thought this was a mistake to buy Alaska the "ice box" but it turned out to be the biggest bargain since the Louisiana purchase

6. Racial Tensions • Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Showed northerners and the world the horrors of slavery while southerners attack it as an exaggeration, contributed to the start of the Civil War. • KKK march on Washington: 75,000-man KKK march in Washington, D. C. They held open meetings around the city and branded a black bellboy with “KKK” across his forehead. They called Jews “Christ-killers,” shot a Catholic priest, and burned Catholic churches. The Klan took over the entire state of Indiana during the 1920s from the Governor on down. • Watts Riots: 1965, The first large race riot since the end of World War II. In 1965, in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a riot broke out. This was the result of a white police officer striking a black bystander during a protest. This triggers a week of violence and anger revealing the resentment blacks felt toward treatment toward them.

7. Industrial Revolution • Economic & Cultural: Industrialization came to the United States between 1790 and 1820 as manufacturers and merchants reorganized work routines and built factories. There was a rapid construction of transportation which allowed goods to become more widespread.

8. Land • Homestead Act: Act that allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land by living on it for 5 years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of about $30 - instead of public land being sold primarily for revenue, it was now being given away to encourage a rapid filling of empty spaces and to provide a stimulus to the family farm, turned out to be a cruel hoax because the land given to the settlers usually had terrible soil and the weather included no precipitation, many farms were repo'd or failed until "dry farming" took root on the plains , then wheat, then massive irrigation projects • Morrill Land Grant Act: Act of 1862 that transferred substantial public acreage to the state governments, which were to sell the land and use the proceeds to finance public education. This act led to many land-grant institutions

9. Tariffs and Trust • Sherman Anti-Trust Act: The first law to limit monopolies in the United States. This wanted to create a fairer competition in the workforce and to limit any take-over's of departments of merchandise. • Taft Hartley Act: Condemned by Labor leaders as a "slave labor law". It outlawed the "closed" shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required union leaders to take a non-communist oath.

10. Immigration • Chinese Exclusion Act 1882: This act permanently banned anyone from China to immigrant to the U.S. This was a display of how old immigrants used their status against new immigrants and the nativist feeling in America. • National Origins Act: 1929- It restricted immigration from any one nation to two percent of the number of people already in the U.S. (set up ratios) of that national origin in 1890, which severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, and excluded Asians entirely.

11. Depression • Hoover’s Economic Policy: help the rich instead of the common people. If the rich get richer, their investments supposedly will lead businesses to expand, and some of that money will trickle down to the people in the form of jobs and salaries. (government loans to business→new investment and plant expansion→newjobs→increasedproduction→more wages in circulation→demand increases) • Stock Market Crash: In 1929, the stock market crashed and caused a world wide Depression. As early as March the stock market had mini-crashes, signaling something was seriously wrong. In October 1929, on Black Friday it crashed. The Thursday before 12 mil. stocks had changed hands. The full devestation was not fully realized until the following Tuesday. • New Deal: President Franklin Roosevelt's precursor of the modern welfare state (1933-1939); programs to combat economic depression enacted a number of social insureance measures and used government spending to stimulate the economy; increased power of the state and the state's intervention in U.S. social and economic life.

12. Depression Cont. • First Hundred Days: This is the term applied to President Roosevelt's first three months in taking office. During this time, FDR had managed to get Congress to pass an unprecedented amount of new legislation that would revolutionize the role of the federal government from that point on. This era saw the passage of bills aimed at repairing the banking system and restoring American's faith in the economy, starting government works projects to employ those out of work, offering subsidies for farmers, and devising a plan to aid in the recovery of the nation's industrial sector. • Alphabet Soup: In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his New Deal to deal with the Great Depression. The administrative style was to create new agencies. Some were set up by Congress (such as TVA) and others by Roosevelt's Executive Order (such as WPA). The agencies were also referred to as "alphabet soup".FIB,CIA,EPA,etc.

13. Cold War • Cold War: The 45 year diplomatic tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that divided much of the world into polarized camps, capitalist against communist. Most of the international conflicts during that period, particularly in the developing world, can be traced to the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. • Korean War: First "hot war" of the Cold war. The Korean War began in 1950 when the Soviet-backed North Koreans invaded South Korea before meeting a counter-offensive by UN Forces, dominated by the United States. The war ended in stalemate in 1953. • Geneva Accords: a 1954 peace agreement that divided Vietnam into Communist-controlled North Vietnam and non-Communist South Vietnam until unification elections could be held in 1956