W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. • www.NortonEbooks.com
FOURTH EDITION
GIVE ME LIBERTY!
Eric Foner
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
PRAISE FOR ERIC FONER’S GIVE ME LIBERTY!
“The book is inviting to students . . . well-organized and easy to read . . . I love the way Dr. Foner writes! The textbook comes alive with his scholarship and teaching experience.” —Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College
“I find that Foner strikes the perfect balance between political, legal, social, and cultural history. . . . [Give Me Liberty!] includes the most current or most relevant scholarship.” —David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University
“Often, history textbooks can seem to be disjointed retellings of facts and concepts that remind one of an encyclopedia. [Foner’s] freedom theme ties the material together well, which isn’t always easy with this kind of broad textbook. I do think it’s effective in tying the social and political together.” —James Karmel, Harford Community College
“Foner’s textbook is superb. It is well informed, elegantly written, and offers a kind of narrative and interpretive coherence that is rare among textbooks.” —Jeffrey Adler, University of Florida
“The theme of freedom is very clearly and adeptly integrated. . . . Give Me Liberty! provides a good model for students on how to investigate and carry through a theme in their own writings.” —Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College, Dallas Community College District
“Give Me Liberty! offers a nice, comprehensive coverage of American history. I feel that equal weight is given to various topics. ‘Voices of Freedom’ is actually one of the major features of the book that prompted me to adopt the text. I am not aware of any other text on the market that has this superb feature. . . . [A] splendid approach.” —Jonathan A. Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College
“I’ve had a number of students in the last year comment on how easy the text is to use with the integrated focus questions and terms.” —Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College
“Give Me Liberty! is visually appealing in many different ways. The manner in which the illustrations, maps, and pedagogical components are incorporated . . . makes the text more accessible and much less intimidating.” —Kent McGaughy, Houston Community College–NW Campus
“I appreciate the book’s terrifically accessible writing as well as its clear statement of themes. It has a wonderfully seamless and authoritative quality to its writing. I plan to continue to offer it to my students for many years to come.” —Beverly Gage, Yale University
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
Fo u r t h E d i t i o n
�
B W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y
N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N
E R I C F O N E R
Fo u r t h E d i t i o n
�
G I V E M E
L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y
W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton
and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education
division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, pub-
lishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars
of Norton’s publishing program—trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s,
the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of 400
and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year—W. W. Norton &
Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008, 2005 by Eric Foner
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Fourth Edition
Editor: Steve Forman
Associate Editor: Justin Cahill
Editorial Assistant: Penelope Lin
Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson
Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi
Copy Editor: Ellen Lohman
Marketing Manager: Sarah England
Media Editors: Steve Hoge, Tacy Quinn
Assistant Editor, Media: Stefani Wallace
Production Manager: Sean Mintus
Art Director: Hope Miller Goodell
Designer: Chin-Yee Lai
Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo
Photo Research: Donna Ranieri
Composition and Layout: Jouve
Manufacturing: Transcontinental
Since this page cannot accommodate all of the copyright notices, the Credits pages at the end of the book
constitute an extension of the copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foner, Eric.
Give me liberty! : An American history / Eric Foner.—Fourth edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-92026-0 (hardcover)
1. United States—History. 2. United States—Politics and government. 3. Democracy—United States—
History. 4. Liberty—History. I. Title.
E178.F66 2014
973—dc23
ISBN: 978-0-393-92026-0 2013029664
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publications include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History.
�
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
Contents
ix
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ... vii LIST OF MAPS, TABLES, AND FIGURES ... xxxiii DEDICATION ... xxxvii PREFACE ... xxxix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ... xlv
PA R T 1: A M E R ICA N COL ON I ES T O 17 6 3
1. A N E W W O R L D . . . 4 THE FIRST AMERICANS ... 6
The Settling of the Americas ... 6 ★ Indian Societies of the
Americas ... 8 ★ Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 9 ★
Western Indians ... 10 ★ Indians of Eastern North America ... 10 ★ Native
American Religion ... 12 ★ Land and Property ... 12 ★ Gender
Relations ... 14 ★ European Views of the Indians ... 14
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM ... 15 Indian Freedom ... 15 ★ Christian Liberty ... 16 ★ Freedom and
Authority ... 17 ★ Liberty and Liberties ... 17
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE ... 18 Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 18 ★ Portugal and West
Africa ... 19 ★ Freedom and Slavery in Africa ... 20 ★ The Voyages of
Columbus ... 20
CONTACT ... 21 Columbus in the New World ... 21 ★ Exploration and Conquest ... 23 ★
The Demographic Disaster ... 24
THE SPANISH EMPIRE ... 24 Governing Spanish America ... 25 ★ Colonists in Spanish
America ... 25 ★ Colonists and Indians ... 26 ★ Justifications for
Conquest ... 27 ★ Spreading the Faith ... 28 ★ Piety and Profit ... 29 ★
Las Casas’s Complaint ... 29 ★ Reforming the Empire ... 30 ★ Exploring
North America ... 31 ★ Spanish Florida ... 33 ★ Spain in the
Southwest ... 33 ★ The Pueblo Revolt ... 34
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES ... 35 French Colonization ... 35
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies
(1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 36
C O N T E N T S
x
Contents
New France and the Indians ... 38 ★ The Dutch Empire ... 41 ★ Dutch
Freedom ... 41 ★ Freedom in New Netherland ... 41 ★ The Dutch and
Religious Toleration ... 42 ★ Settling New Netherland ... 43 ★ New
Netherland and the Indians ... 44
REVIEW ... 47
2 . B E G I N N I N G S O F E N G L I S H A M E R I C A , 16 0 7–16 6 0 . . . 4 8
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD ... 50 Unifying the English Nation ... 50 ★ England and Ireland ... 50 ★ England
and North America ... 51 ★ Spreading Protestantism ... 52 ★ The Social
Crisis ... 52 ★ Masterless Men ... 53
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH ... 54 English Emigrants ... 54 ★ Indentured Servants ... 55 ★ Land and
Liberty ... 55 ★ Englishmen and Indians ... 56 ★ The Transformation of
Indian Life ... 57 ★ Changes in the Land ... 58
SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE ... 58 The Jamestown Colony ... 58 ★ From Company to Society ... 59 ★
Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 59 ★ The Uprising of 1622 ... 60 ★
A Tobacco Colony ... 61 ★ Women and the Family ... 62 ★
The Maryland Experiment ... 63 ★ Religion in Maryland ... 64
THE NEW ENGLAND WAY ... 64 The Rise of Puritanism ... 64 ★ Moral Liberty ... 65 ★ The Pilgrims at
Plymouth ... 66 ★ The Great Migration ... 67 ★ The Puritan Family ... 68 ★
Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 68 ★ Church and State in
Puritan Massachusetts ... 70
NEW ENGLANDERS DIVIDED ... 70 Roger Williams ... 71 ★ Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 71 ★ The Trials
of Anne Hutchinson ... 72 ★ Puritans and Indians ... 73
Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637),
and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court
(July 3, 1645) ... 74
The Pequot War ... 76 ★ The New England Economy ... 77 ★
The Merchant Elite ... 78 ★ The Half-Way Covenant ... 78
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM ... 79 The Rights of Englishmen ... 79 ★ The English Civil War ... 80 ★
England’s Debate over Freedom ... 80 ★ English Liberty ... 81 ★
The Civil War and English America ... 82 ★ The Crisis in Maryland ... 82 ★
Cromwell and the Empire ... 83
REVIEW ... 85
Contents
xi
3 . C R E A T I N G A N G L O - A M E R I C A , 16 6 0 –17 5 0 . . . 8 6 GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND’S EMPIRE ... 88
The Mercantilist System ... 88 ★ The Conquest of New
Netherland ... 88 ★ New York and the Rights of Englishmen and
Englishwomen ... 90 ★ New York and the Indians ... 90 ★ The Charter
of Liberties ... 91 ★ The Founding of Carolina ... 91 ★ The Holy
Experiment ... 92 ★ Quaker Liberty ... 93 ★ Land in Pennsylvania ... 94
ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY ... 94 Englishmen and Africans ... 94 ★ Slavery in History ... 95 ★ Slavery in the
West Indies ... 95 ★ Slavery and the Law ... 97 ★ The Rise of Chesapeake
Slavery ... 98 ★ Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia ... 99 ★
The End of the Rebellion, and Its Consequences ... 100 ★ A Slave
Society ... 100 ★ Notions of Freedom ... 101
COLONIES IN CRISIS ... 101 The Glorious Revolution ... 102 ★ The Glorious Revolution in
America ... 103 ★ The Maryland Uprising ... 103 ★ Leisler’s
Rebellion ... 104 ★ Changes in New England ... 104 ★ The Prosecution
of Witches ... 105 ★ The Salem Witch Trials ... 105
THE GROWTH OF COLONIAL AMERICA ... 106 A Diverse Population ... 107 ★ Attracting Settlers ... 107 ★ The
German Migration ... 109 ★ Religious Diversity ... 110 ★ Indian Life in
Transition ... 111
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to
Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769), and From Memorial against
Non-English Immigration (December 1727) ... 112
Regional Diversity ... 114 ★ The Consumer Revolution ... 115 ★ Colonial
Cities ... 115 ★ Colonial Artisans ... 116 ★ An Atlantic World ... 116
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES ... 118 The Colonial Elite ... 118 ★ Anglicization ... 119 ★ The South Carolina
Aristocracy ... 119 ★ Poverty in the Colonies ... 120 ★ The Middle
Ranks ... 121 ★ Women and the Household Economy ... 122 ★ North
America at Mid-Century ... 123
REVIEW ... 125
4 . S L A V E R Y, F R E E D O M , A N D T H E S T R U G G L E F O R E M P I R E T O 17 6 3 . . . 1 2 6
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE ... 128 Atlantic Trade ... 128 ★ Africa and the Slave Trade ... 130 ★ The Middle
Passage ... 130 ★ Chesapeake Slavery ... 132 ★ Freedom and Slavery in
the Chesapeake ... 133 ★ Indian Slavery in Early Carolina ... 133 ★ The
xii
Contents
Rice Kingdom ... 134 ★ The Georgia Experiment ... 134 ★ Slavery in
the North ... 135
SLAVE CULTURES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE ... 136 Becoming African-American ... 136 ★ African Religion in Colonial
America ... 136 ★ African-American Cultures ... 137 ★ Resistance to
Slavery ... 138 ★ The Crisis of 1739–1741 ... 139
AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM ... 140 British Patriotism ... 140 ★ The British Constitution ... 140 ★ The
Language of Liberty ... 141 ★ Republican Liberty ... 141 ★ Liberal
Freedom ... 142
THE PUBLIC SPHERE ... 143 The Right to Vote ... 144 ★ Political Cultures ... 144 ★ Colonial
Government ... 145 ★ The Rise of the Assemblies ... 146 ★ Politics in
Public ... 146 ★ The Colonial Press ... 147 ★ Freedom of Expression
and Its Limits ... 148 ★ The Trial of Zenger ... 148 ★ The American
Enlightenment ... 149
THE GREAT AWAKENING ... 150 Religious Revivals ... 150 ★ The Preaching of Whitefield ... 151 ★
The Awakening’s Impact ... 151
IMPERIAL RIVALRIES ... 152 Spanish North America ... 152 ★ The Spanish in California ... 154 ★
The French Empire ... 155
BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT ... 156 The Middle Ground ... 156 ★ The Seven Years’ War ... 157 ★ A World
Transformed ... 158 ★ Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 160 ★ The Proclamation Line
... 160 ★ Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 161
Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763), and From
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African (1789) ... 162
Colonial Identities ... 164
REVIEW ... 166
PA R T 2 : A N E W N AT ION, 17 6 3 –18 4 0
5 . T H E A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N , 17 6 3 –17 8 3 . . . 17 0 THE CRISIS BEGINS ... 171
Consolidating the Empire ... 172 ★ Taxing the Colonies ... 173 ★ The
Stamp Act Crisis ... 173 ★ Taxation and Representation ... 174 ★ Liberty
and Resistance ... 175 ★ Politics in the Streets ... 176 ★ The
Regulators ... 176 ★ The Tenant Uprising ... 178
Contents
xiii
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION ... 178 The Townshend Crisis ... 178 ★ Homespun Virtue ... 179 ★ The Boston
Massacre ... 179 ★ Wilkes and Liberty ... 181 ★ The Tea Act ... 181 ★
The Intolerable Acts ... 181
THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE ... 182 The Continental Congress ... 182 ★ The Continental Association ...
183 ★ The Sweets of Liberty ... 183 ★ The Outbreak of War ... 184 ★
Independence? ... 185 ★ Common Sense ... 186 ★ Paine’s Impact ... 187 ★
The Declaration of Independence ... 187
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), and
From Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of
the American Revolution (1775) ... 188
The Declaration and American Freedom ... 190 ★ An Asylum for
Mankind ... 191 ★ The Global Declaration of Independence ... 192
SECURING INDEPENDENCE ... 193 The Balance of Power ... 193 ★ Blacks in the Revolution ... 193 ★
The First Years of the War ... 194 ★ The Battle of Saratoga ... 195 ★
The War in the South ... 197 ★ Victory at Last ... 199
REVIEW ... 203
6 . T H E R E V O L U T I O N W I T H I N . . . 2 0 4 DEMOCRATIZING FREEDOM ... 206
The Dream of Equality ... 206 ★ Expanding the Political Nation ... 206 ★
The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 207 ★ The New Constitutions ... 208 ★
The Right to Vote ... 209 ★ Democratizing Government ... 209
TOWARD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION ... 210 Catholic Americans ... 211 ★ The Founders and Religion ... 211 ★ Separating
Church and State ... 212 ★ Jefferson and Religious Liberty ... 213 ★
The Revolution and the Churches ... 214 ★ Christian Republicanism ... 215
DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM ... 215 Toward Free Labor ... 215 ★ The Soul of a Republic ... 216 ★ The Politics
of Inflation ... 217 ★ The Debate over Free Trade ... 218
THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY ... 218 Colonial Loyalists ... 218 ★ Loyalists’ Plight ... 219 ★ The Indians’
Revolution ... 221 ★ White Freedom, Indian Freedom ... 222
SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION ... 223 The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 223 ★ Obstacles to
Abolition ... 224 ★ The Cause of General Liberty ... 225 ★ Petitions
for Freedom ... 225 ★ British Emancipators ... 226 ★ Voluntary
Emancipations ... 228 ★ Abolition in the North ... 228 ★ Free Black
Communities ... 229
xiv
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree,
Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the
Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 230
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY ... 232 Revolutionary Women ... 232 ★ Gender and Politics ... 232 ★ Republican
Motherhood ... 234 ★ The Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 235
REVIEW ... 237
7. F O U N D I N G A N A T I O N , 17 8 3 –17 9 1 . . . 2 3 8 AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATION ... 240
The Articles of Confederation ... 240 ★ Congress and the
West ... 242 ★ Settlers and the West ... 242 ★ The Land
Ordinances ... 243 ★ The Confederation’s Weaknesses ... 245 ★ Shays’s
Rebellion ... 246 ★ Nationalists of the 1780s ... 246
A NEW CONSTITUTION ... 247 The Structure of Government ... 248 ★ The Limits of Democracy ... 249 ★
The Division and Separation of Powers ... 250 ★ The Debate over Slavery
... 251 ★ Slavery in the Constitution ... 251 ★ The Final
Document ... 253
THE RATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS ... 254
The Federalist ... 254 ★ “Extend the Sphere” ... 255 ★ The
Anti-Federalists ... 256 ★ The Bill of Rights ... 257
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American
Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay
Signed “Agrippa” (1787) ... 260
“WE THE PEOPLE” ... 263 National Identity ... 263 ★ Indians in the New Nation ... 263 ★ Blacks and
the Republic ... 266 ★ Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 268 ★ Principles of
Freedom ... 269
REVIEW ... 271
8 . S E C U R I N G T H E R E P U B L I C , 17 9 1–18 15 . . . 2 7 2 POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION ... 273
Hamilton’s Program ... 274 ★ The Emergence of Opposition ... 274 ★
The Jefferson-Hamilton Bargain ... 275 ★ The Impact of the
French Revolution ... 276 ★ Political Parties ... 277 ★ The Whiskey
Rebellion ... 278 ★ The Republican Party ... 279 ★ An Expanding Political
Sphere ... 279 ★ The Democratic-Republican Societies ... 280 ★ The Rights
of Women ... 281 ★ Women and the Republic ... 281
Contents
xv
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of
the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican
Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) ... 282
THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY ... 284 The Election of 1796 ... 284 ★ The “Reign of Witches” ... 285 ★
The Virginia and Kentucky Revolutions ... 286 ★ The “Revolution of
1800” ... 287 ★ Slavery and Politics ... 288 ★ The Haitian Revolution
... 288 ★ Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 289
JEFFERSON IN POWER ... 290 Judicial Review ... 291 ★ The Louisiana Purchase ... 292 ★ Lewis and
Clark ... 294 ★ Incorporating Louisiana ... 294 ★ The Barbary Wars ... 295 ★
The Embargo ... 296 ★ Madison and Pressure for War ... 297
THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” ... 297 The Indian Response ... 298 ★ Tecumseh’s Vision ... 298 ★ The War of
1812 ... 299 ★ The War’s Aftermath ... 302 ★ The End of the Federalist
Party ... 303
REVIEW ... 305
9 . T H E M A R K E T R E V O L U T I O N , 18 0 0 –18 4 0 . . . 3 0 6 A NEW ECONOMY ... 308
Roads and Steamboats ... 309 ★ The Erie Canal ... 309 ★ Railroads and
the Telegraph ... 311 ★ The Rise of the West ... 312 ★ The Cotton
Kingdom ... 315 ★ The Unfree Westward Movement ... 317
MARKET SOCIETY ... 318 Commercial Farmers ... 318 ★ The Growth of Cities ... 319 ★ The Factory
System ... 319 ★ The Industrial Worker ... 323 ★ The “Mill Girls” ... 323 ★
The Growth of Immigration ... 324 ★ Irish and German Newcomers ...
324 ★ The Rise of Nativism ... 326 ★ The Transformation of Law ... 327
THE FREE INDIVIDUAL ... 328 The West and Freedom ... 329 ★ The Transcendentalists ... 330 ★
Individualism ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”
(1837), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative” (1845) ... 332
The Second Great Awakening ... 334 ★ The Awakening’s Impact ... 335 ★
The Emergence of Mormonism ... 336
THE LIMITS OF PROSPERITY ... 337 Liberty and Prosperity ... 337 ★ Race and Opportunity ... 338 ★ The Cult
of Domesticity ... 339 ★ Women and Work ... 340 ★ The Early Labor
Movement ... 341 ★ The “Liberty of Living” ... 342
REVIEW ... 345
xvi
Contents
10 . D E M O C R A C Y I N A M E R I C A , 18 15 –18 4 0 . . . 3 4 6 THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY ... 348
Property and Democracy ... 348 ★ The Dorr War ... 348 ★ Tocqueville on
Democracy ... 349 ★ The Information Revolution ... 350 ★ The Limits of
Democracy ... 351 ★ A Racial Democracy ... 352 ★ Race and Class ... 353
NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS ... 353 The American System ... 353 ★ Banks and Money ... 355 ★ The Panic of ...
1819 ... 355 ★ The Politics of the Panic ... 356 ★ The Missouri Controversy
... 356 ★ The Slavery Question ... 358
NATION, SECTION, AND PARTY ... 359 The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 359 ★
The Monroe Doctrine ... 360 ★ The Election of 1824 ... 361
Voices of Freedom: From President James Monroe, Annual Message
to Congress (1823), and From John C. Calhoun, “A Disquisition on
Government” (ca. 1845) ... 362
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 364 ★ “Liberty Is
Power” ... 365 ★ Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 365 ★
The Election of 1828 ... 366
THE AGE OF JACKSON ... 367 The Party System ... 367 ★ Democrats and Whigs ... 368 ★ Public and
Private Freedom ... 369 ★ Politics and Morality ... 370 ★ South Carolina
and Nullification ... 371 ★ Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 371 ★ The
Nullification Crisis ... 373 ★ Indian Removal ... 374 ★ The Supreme Court
and the Indians ... 374
THE BANK WAR AND AFTER ... 377 Biddle’s Bank ... 377 ★ The Pet Banks and the Economy ... 379 ★
The Panic of 1837 ... 380 ★ Van Buren in Office ... 380 ★ The Election
of 1840 ... 381 ★ His Accidency ... 382
REVIEW ... 384
PA R T 3 : SL AV E RY, F R E E DOM, A N D T H E
CR ISIS OF T H E U N ION, 18 4 0–18 7 7
11. T H E P E C U L I A R I N S T I T U T I O N . . . 3 8 8 THE OLD SOUTH ... 390
Cotton Is King ... 390 ★ The Second Middle Passage ... 391 ★ Slavery and
the Nation ... 391 ★ The Southern Economy ... 393 ★ Plain Folk of the Old
South ... 394 ★ The Planter Class ... 395 ★ The Paternalist Ethos ... 396 ★
Contents
xvii
The Code of Honor ... 396 ★ The Proslavery Argument ... 398 ★ Abolition
in the Americas ... 399 ★ Slavery and Liberty ... 400 ★ Slavery and
Civilization ... 400
LIFE UNDER SLAVERY ... 401 Slaves and the Law ... 401 ★ Conditions of Slave Life ... 402 ★ Free Blacks
in the Old South ... 403
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long
(1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) ... 404
The Upper and Lower South ... 407 ★ Slave Labor ... 408 ★ Gang Labor and
Task Labor ... 408 ★ Slavery in the Cities ... 410 ★ Maintaining Order ... 410
SLAVE CULTURE ... 411 The Slave Family ... 412 ★ The Threat of Sale ... 412 ★ Gender Roles
among Slaves ... 413 ★ Slave Religion ... 413 ★ The Gospel of Freedom ...
414 ★ The Desire for Liberty ... 415
RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY ... 416 Forms of Resistance ... 416 ★ Fugitive Slaves ... 418 ★ The Amistad ... 419 ★
Slave Revolts ... 419 ★ Nat Turner’s Rebellion ... 420
REVIEW ... 423
12 . A N A G E O F R E F O R M , 18 2 0 –18 4 0 . . . 4 2 4 THE REFORM IMPULSE ... 425
Utopian Communities ... 426 ★ The Shakers ... 426 ★ Oneida ... 427 ★
Worldly Communities ... 428 ★ The Owenites ... 429 ★ Religion and
Reform ... 430 ★ The Temperance Movement ... 431 ★ Critics of
Reform ... 431 ★ Reformers and Freedom ... 432 ★ The Invention of the
Asylum ... 433 ★ The Common School ... 433
THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY ... 435 Colonization ... 435 ★ Blacks and Colonization ... 435 ★ Militant Abolitionism
... 436 ★ The Emergence of Garrison ... 437 ★ Spreading the Abolitionist
Message ... 437 ★ Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 439 ★ Abolitionists and the
Idea of Freedom ... 439 ★ A New Vision of America ... 440
BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM ... 441 Black Abolitionists ... 441 ★ Abolitionism and Race ... 442 ★ Slavery and
American Freedom ... 443 ★ Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 443 ★
Slavery and Civil Liberties ... 445
THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM ... 446 The Rise of the Public Woman ... 446 ★ Women and Free Speech ... 447 ★
Women’s Rights ... 448 ★ Feminism and Freedom ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator
(August 2, 1837), and From Frederick Douglass, Speech on July 5, 1852,
Rochester, New York ... 450
xviii
Contents
Women and Work ... 452 ★ The Slavery of Sex ... 453 ★ “Social
Freedom” ... 453 ★ The Abolitionist Schism ... 454
REVIEW ... 457
13 . A H O U S E D I V I D E D , 18 4 0 –18 6 1 . . . 4 5 8 FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY ... 459
Continental Expansion ... 459 ★ The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and
California ... 460 ★ The Texas Revolt ... 460 ★ The Election of 1844 ...
463 ★ The Road to War ... 464 ★ The War and Its Critics ... 465 ★ Combat
in Mexico ... 466 ★ Race and Manifest Destiny ... 468 ★ Redefining Race
... 469 ★ Gold-Rush California ... 469 ★ California and the Boundaries of
Freedom ... 470 ★ The Other Gold Rush ... 471 ★ Opening Japan ... 471
A DOSE OF ARSENIC ... 473 The Wilmot Proviso ... 473 ★ The Free Soil Appeal ... 474 ★ Crisis and
Compromise ... 474 ★ The Great Debate ... 475 ★ The Fugitive Slave
Issue ... 475 ★ Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 477 ★ The Kansas-
Nebraska Act ... 478
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ... 479 The Northern Economy ... 479 ★ The Rise and Fall of the
Know-Nothings ... 481 ★ The Free Labor Ideology ... 483 ★ Bleeding
Kansas and the Election of 1856 ... 484
THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN ... 485 The Dred Scott Decision ... 485 ★ The Decision’s Aftermath ... 486 ★
Lincoln and Slavery ... 486 ★ The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 487 ★
John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 489
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 490
The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 492 ★ The Democratic Split ... 493 ★
The Nomination of Lincoln ... 494 ★ The Election of 1860 ... 494
THE IMPENDING CRISIS ... 495 The Secession Movement ... 495 ★ The Secession Crisis ... 496 ★ And the
War Came ... 497
REVIEW ... 501
14 . A N E W B I R T H O F F R E E D O M : T H E C I V I L W A R , 18 6 1–18 6 5 . . . 5 0 2
THE FIRST MODERN WAR ... 503 The Two Combatants ... 504 ★ The Technology of War ... 504 ★ The
Public and the War ... 506 ★ Mobilizing Resources ... 507 ★ Military
Contents
xix
Strategies ... 508 ★ The War Begins ... 509 ★ The War in the East,
1862 ... 509 ★ The War in the West ... 511
THE COMING OF EMANCIPATION ... 511 Slavery and the War ... 511 ★ The Unraveling of Slavery ... 513 ★
Steps toward Emancipation ... 513 ★ Lincoln’s Decision ... 514 ★
The Emancipation Proclamation ... 516 ★ Enlisting Black Troops ... 517 ★
The Black Soldier ... 518
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION ... 519 Liberty and Union ... 520 ★ Lincoln’s Vision ... 520 ★ From Union to
Nation ... 521 ★ The War and American Religion ... 522 ★ Liberty in
Wartime ... 523 ★ The North’s Transformation ... 524 ★ Government and
the Economy ... 524 ★ The War and Native Americans ... 525
Voices of Freedom: From Letter of Thomas F. Drayton (April 17, 1861),
and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore
(April 18, 1864) ... 526
A New Financial System ... 528 ★ Women and the War ... 528 ★
The Divided North ... 530
THE CONFEDERATE NATION ... 531 Leadership and Government ... 531 ★ The Inner Civil War ... 532 ★
Economic Problems ... 533 ★ Southern Unionists ... 534 ★ Women and the
Confederacy ... 535 ★ Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 535
TURNING POINTS ... 536 Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 536 ★ 1864 ... 537
REHEARSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END OF THE WAR ... 539
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 539 ★ Wartime Reconstruction in the
West ... 540 ★ The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 541 ★ Victory
at Last ... 541 ★ The War and the World ... 543 ★ The War in American
History ... 544
REVIEW ... 547
15 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ”: R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 18 6 5 –18 7 7 . . . 5 4 8
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM ... 550 Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom ... 550 ★ Families in Freedom ... 550 ★
Church and School ... 551 ★ Political Freedom ... 551 ★ Land, Labor, and
Freedom ... 552 ★ Masters without Slaves ... 553 ★ The Free Labor Vision
... 554 ★ The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 555 ★ The Failure of Land Reform
... 556 ★ Toward a New South ... 556 ★ The White Farmer ... 557 ★
The Urban South ... 558 ★ The Aftermath of Slavery ... 559
xx
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the
Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping
Contract (1866) ... 560
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ... 562 Andrew Johnson ... 562 ★ The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ...
563 ★ The Black Codes ... 563 ★ The Radical Republicans ... 564 ★ The
Origins of Civil Rights ... 565 ★ The Fourteenth Amendment ... 566 ★
The Reconstruction Act ... 566 ★ Impeachment and the Election of Grant
... 567 ★ The Fifteenth Amendment ... 568 ★ The “Great Constitutional
Revolution” ... 569 ★ Boundaries of Freedom ... 570 ★ The Rights of
Women ... 570 ★ Feminists and Radicals ... 571
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ... 572 “The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 572 ★ The Black Officeholder ... 573 ★
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 574 ★ Southern Republicans in Power
... 575 ★ The Quest for Prosperity ... 576
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION ... 577 Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 577 ★ “A Reign of Terror” ... 577 ★ The
Liberal Republicans ... 579 ★ The North’s Retreat ... 580 ★ The Triumph of
the Redeemers ... 582 ★ The Disputed Election and Bargain of
1877 ... 582 ★ The End of Reconstruction ... 583
REVIEW ... 585
PA R T 4: T OWA R D A G L OBA L PR ESE NCE ,
18 7 0–19 2 0
16 . A M E R I C A’ S G I L D E D A G E , 18 7 0 –18 9 0 . . . 5 8 8 THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ... 589
The Industrial Economy ... 590 ★ Railroads and the National Market ...
591 ★ The Spirit of Innovation ... 592 ★ Competition and Consolidation
... 593 ★ The Rise of Andrew Carnegie ... 594 ★ The Triumph of John D.
Rockefeller ... 597 ★ Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age ... 598 ★
Sunshine and Shadow: Increasing Wealth and Poverty ... 599
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WEST ... 600 A Diverse Region ... 601 ★ Farming on the Middle Border ... 602 ★
Bonanza Farms ... 603 ★ The Cowboy and the Corporate West ... 604 ★
Conflict on the Mormon Frontier ... 605 ★ The Subjugation of the Plains
Indians ... 605
Voices of Freedom: From Ira Steward, “A Second Declaration of
Independence” (1879), and From Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth”
(1889) ... 606
Contents
xxi
“Let Me Be a Free Man” ... 608 ★ Remaking Indian Life ... 610 ★ The
Dawes Act ... 611 ★ Indian Citizenship ... 612 ★ The Ghost Dance and
Wounded Knee ... 613 ★ Settler Societies and Global Wests ... 614
POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE ... 615 The Corruption of Politics ... 615 ★ The Politics of Dead Center ... 616 ★
Government and the Economy ... 617 ★ Reform Legislation ... 618 ★
Political Conflict in the States ... 619
FREEDOM IN THE GILDED AGE ... 620 The Social Problem ... 620 ★ Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy ... 620 ★
Social Darwinism in America ... 621 ★ Liberty of Contract ... 622 ★ The
Courts and Freedom ... 623
LABOR AND THE REPUBLIC ... 624 “The Overwhelming Labor Question” ... 624 ★ The Knights of Labor and the
“Conditions Essential to Liberty” ... 625 ★ Middle-Class Reformers ... 626 ★
Progress and Poverty ... 627 ★ The Cooperative Commonwealth ... 627 ★
Bellamy’s Utopia ... 627 ★ Protestants and Moral Reform ... 628 ★ A Social
Gospel ... 629 ★ The Haymarket Affair ... 629 ★ Labor and Politics ... 631
REVIEW ... 633
17. F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D , 18 9 0 –19 0 0 . . . 6 3 4
THE POPULIST CHALLENGE ... 636 The Farmers’ Revolt ... 636 ★ The People’s Party ... 637 ★ The Populist
Platform ... 638 ★ The Populist Coalition ... 638 ★ The Government and
Labor ... 641 ★ Populism and Labor ... 642 ★ Bryan and Free Silver ... 642 ★
The Campaign of 1896 ... 643
THE SEGREGATED SOUTH ... 645 The Redeemers in Power ... 645 ★ The Failure of the New South
Dream ... 645 ★ Black Life in the South ... 646 ★ The Kansas
Exodus ... 647 ★ The Decline of Black Politics ... 648 ★ The Elimination
of Black Voting ... 648 ★ The Law of Segregation ... 649 ★ Segregation
and White Domination ... 650 ★ The Rise of Lynching ... 651 ★ Politics,
Religion, and Memory ... 652
REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES ... 653 The New Immigration and the New Nativism ... 654 ★ Chinese Exclusion
and Chinese Rights ... 654 ★ The Emergence of Booker T. Washington ...
656 ★ The Rise of the AFL ... 656 ★ The Women’s Era ... 657
BECOMING A WORLD POWER ... 659 The New Imperialism ... 659 ★ American Expansionism ... 660 ★ The Lure
of Empire ... 660 ★ The “Splendid Little War” ... 661 ★ Roosevelt at San
Juan Hill ... 662 ★ An American Empire ... 664 ★ The Philippine War ... 666
xxii
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885), and From
“Aguinaldo’s Case against the United States” (1899) ... 668
Citizens or Subjects? ... 670 ★ Drawing the Global Color Line ... 671 ★
“Republic or Empire?” ... 671
REVIEW ... 675
18 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 19 0 0 –19 16 . . . 6 7 6 AN URBAN AGE AND A CONSUMER SOCIETY ... 678
Farms and Cities ... 678 ★ The Muckrakers ... 680 ★ Immigration as a
Global Process ... 680 ★ The Immigrant Quest for Freedom ... 682 ★
Consumer Freedom ... 683 ★ The Working Woman ... 684 ★ The Rise
of Fordism ... 685 ★ The Promise of Abundance ... 686 ★ An American
Standard of Living ... 687
VARIETIES OF PROGRESSIVISM ... 688 Industrial Freedom ... 688 ★ The Socialist Presence ... 689 ★ The Gospel of
Debs ... 690 ★ AFL and IWW ... 691 ★ The New Immigrants on Strike ... 691
Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and
Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “A Workingman’s
Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ... 692
Labor and Civil Liberties ... 695 ★ The New Feminism ... 695 ★ The Rise
of Personal Freedom ... 696 ★ The Birth-Control Movement ... 697 ★
Native American Progressivism ... 698
THE POLITICS OF PROGRESSIVISM ... 698 Effective Freedom ... 698 ★ State and Local Reforms ... 699 ★ Progressive
Democracy ... 700 ★ Government by Expert ... 701 ★ Jane Addams and
Hull House ... 701 ★ “Spearheads for Reform” ... 702 ★ The Campaign
for Woman Suffrage ... 703 ★ Maternalist Reform ... 704 ★ The Idea of
Economic Citizenship ... 705
THE PROGRESSIVE PRESIDENTS ... 705 Theodore Roosevelt ... 706 ★ Roosevelt and Economic Regulation ... 706 ★
John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature ... 707 ★ The Conservation
Movement ... 707 ★ Taft in Office ... 708 ★ The Election of 1912 ... 709 ★
New Freedom and New Nationalism ... 710 ★ Wilson’s First Term ... 710 ★
The Expanding Role of Government ... 711
REVIEW ... 713
19 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D W O R L D W A R I , 19 16 –19 2 0 . . . 7 14
AN ERA OF INTERVENTION ... 716 “I Took the Canal Zone” ... 717 ★ The Roosevelt Corollary ... 718 ★ Moral
Imperialism ... 719 ★ Wilson and Mexico ... 720
Contents
xxiii
AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR ... 721 Neutrality and Preparedness ... 722 ★ The Road to War ... 723 ★
The Fourteen Points ... 724
THE WAR AT HOME ... 726 The Progressives’ War ... 726 ★ The Wartime State ... 726 ★ The
Propaganda War ... 727 ★ “The Great Cause of Freedom” ... 728 ★
The Coming of Woman Suffrage ... 728 ★ Prohibition ... 730 ★ Liberty in
Wartime ... 731 ★ The Espionage Act ... 732 ★ Coercive Patriotism ... 733
WHO IS AN AMERICAN? ... 734 The “Race Problem” ... 734 ★ Americanization and Pluralism ... 734
Voices of Freedom: From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before
Sentencing under the Espionage Act (1918), and From W. E. B. Du Bois,
“Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (1919) ... 736
The Anti-German Crusade ... 738 ★ Toward Immigration Restriction ... 739 ★
Groups Apart: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Asian-Americans ... 739 ★ The
Color Line ... 740 ★ Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race ... 741 ★ W. E. B. Du Bois
and the Revival of Black Protest ... 742 ★ Closing Ranks ... 743 ★ The Great
Migration and the “Promised Land” ... 743 ★ Racial Violence, North and
South ... 744 ★ The Rise of Garveyism ... 745
1919 ... 746 A Worldwide Upsurge ... 746 ★ Upheaval in America ... 746 ★ The Great
Steel Strike ... 747 ★ The Red Scare ... 748 ★ Wilson at Versailles ... 748 ★
The Wilsonian Moment ... 749 ★ The Seeds of Wars to Come ... 752 ★
The Treaty Debate ... 753
REVIEW ... 755
PA R T 5 : DE PR ESSION A N D WA RS,
19 2 0–19 5 3
2 0 . F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N : T H E T W E N T I E S , 19 2 0 –19 3 2 . . . 7 5 8
THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA ... 760 A Decade of Prosperity ... 760 ★ A New Society ... 761 ★ The Limits of
Prosperity ... 762 ★ The Farmers’ Plight ... 763 ★ The Image of Business ...
764 ★ The Decline of Labor ... 765 ★ The Equal Rights Amendment ... 766 ★
Women’s Freedom ... 767
BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT ... 769 The Retreat from Progressivism ... 769 ★ The Republican Era ... 769 ★
Corruption in Government ... 770 ★ The Election of 1924 ... 770 ★
Economic Diplomacy ... 771
xxiv
Contents
Voices of Freedom: From André Siegfried, “The Gulf Between,”
Atlantic Monthly (March 1928), and From Majority Opinion, Justice
James C. McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) ... 772
THE BIRTH OF CIVIL LIBERTIES ... 774 The “Free Mob” ... 775 ★ A “Clear and Present Danger” ... 776 ★
The Court and Civil Liberties ... 776
THE CULTURE WARS ... 777 The Fundamentalist Revolt ... 777 ★ The Scopes Trial ... 779 ★ The
Second Klan ... 780 ★ Closing the Golden Door ... 781 ★ Race and the Law
... 783 ★ Pluralism and Liberty ... 784 ★ Promoting Tolerance ... 785 ★
The Emergence of Harlem ... 786 ★ The Harlem Renaissance ... 787
THE GREAT DEPRESSION ... 788 The Election of 1928 ... 788 ★ The Coming of the Depression ... 789 ★
Americans and the Depression ... 791 ★ Resignation and Protest ... 792 ★
Hoover’s Response ... 792 ★ The Worsening Economic Outlook ... 794 ★
Freedom in the Modern World ... 795
REVIEW ... 797
2 1. T H E N E W D E A L , 19 3 2 –19 4 0 . . . 7 9 8 THE FIRST NEW DEAL ... 800
FDR and the Election of 1932 ... 800 ★ The Coming of the New
Deal ... 802 ★ The Banking Crisis ... 803 ★ The NRA ... 804 ★ Government
Jobs ... 805 ★ Public-Works Projects ... 806 ★ The New Deal and
Agriculture ... 807 ★ The New Deal and Housing ... 808 ★ The Court and
the New Deal ... 810
THE GRASSROOTS REVOLT ... 810 Labor’s Great Upheaval ... 810 ★ The Rise of the CIO ... 812 ★ Labor and
Politics ... 813 ★ Voices of Protest ... 814 ★ Religion on the Radio ... 815
THE SECOND NEW DEAL ... 815 The WPA and the Wagner Act ... 816 ★ The American Welfare State ...
817 ★ The Social Security System ... 818
A RECKONING WITH LIBERTY ... 818 FDR and the Idea of Freedom ... 819
Voices of Freedom: From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat”
(1934), and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to
the Grapes of Wrath (1938) ... 820
The Election of 1936 ... 822 ★ The Court Fight ... 823 ★ The End of the
Second New Deal ... 824
THE LIMITS OF CHANGE ... 824 The New Deal and American Women ... 825 ★ The Southern Veto ... 826 ★
The Stigma of Welfare ... 827 ★ The Indian New Deal ... 827 ★ The New
Contents
xxv
Deal and Mexican-Americans ... 828 ★ Last Hired, First Fired ... 829 ★
A New Deal for Blacks ... 829 ★ Federal Discrimination ... 830
A NEW CONCEPTION OF AMERICA ... 831 The Heyday of American Communism ... 831 ★ Redefining the People ...
832 ★ Promoting Diversity ... 833 ★ Challenging the Color Line ... 834 ★
Labor and Civil Liberties ... 835 ★ The End of the New Deal ... 836 ★
The New Deal in American History ... 837
REVIEW ... 839
2 2 . F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D W A R I I , 19 4 1–19 4 5 . . . 8 4 0
FIGHTING WORLD WAR II ... 842 Good Neighbors ... 842 ★ The Road to War ... 844 ★ Isolationism ... 844 ★
War in Europe ... 845 ★ Toward Intervention ... 846 ★ Pearl Harbor ... 847 ★
The War in the Pacific ... 848 ★ The War in Europe ... 849
THE HOME FRONT ... 852 Mobilizing for War ... 852 ★ Business and the War ... 853 ★ Labor in
Wartime ... 855 ★ Fighting for the Four Freedoms ... 855 ★ Freedom
from Want ... 856 ★ The Office of War Information ... 857 ★ The Fifth
Freedom ... 858 ★ Women at Work ... 859 ★ The Pull of Tradition ... 860
VISIONS OF POSTWAR FREEDOM ... 860 Toward an American Century ... 860 ★ “The Way of Life of Free Men” ...
861 ★ An Economic Bill of Rights ... 862 ★ The Road to Serfdom ... 863
THE AMERICAN DILEMMA ... 863 Patriotic Assimilation ... 864 ★ The Bracero Program ... 865 ★ Mexican-
American Rights ... 865 ★ Indians during the War ... 866 ★ Asian-
Americans in Wartime ... 866 ★ Japanese-American Internment ... 867 ★
Blacks and the War ... 869 ★ Blacks and Military Service ... 869 ★ Birth
of the Civil Rights Movement ... 870 ★ The Double-V ... 871 ★ What the
Negro Wants ... 871
Voices of Freedom: From Henry R. Luce, The American Century
(1941), and From Charles H. Wesley, “The Negro Has Always Wanted
the Four Freedoms,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) ... 872
An American Dilemma ... 874 ★ Black Internationalism ... 875
THE END OF THE WAR ... 876 “The Most Terrible Weapon” ... 876 ★ The Dawn of the Atomic Age ...
877 ★ The Nature of the War ... 878 ★ Planning the Postwar World ... 878 ★
Yalta and Bretton Woods ... 879 ★ The United Nations ... 880 ★ Peace, but
Not Harmony ... 880
REVIEW ... 883
xxvi
Contents
2 3 . T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D T H E C O L D W A R , 19 4 5 –19 5 3 . . . 8 8 4
ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR ... 886 The Two Powers ... 886 ★ The Roots of Containment ... 887 ★ The Iron
Curtain ... 887 ★ The Truman Doctrine ... 887 ★ The Marshall Plan ... 889 ★
The Reconstruction of Japan ... 890 ★ The Berlin Blockade and NATO ...
890 ★ The Growing Communist Challenge ... 891 ★ The Korean War ...
891 ★ Cold War Critics ... 895 ★ Imperialism and Decolonization ... 896
THE COLD WAR AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM ... 896 The Cultural Cold War ... 897 ★ Freedom and Totalitarianism ... 897 ★
The Rise of Human Rights ... 898 ★ Ambiguities of Human Rights ... 899
THE TRUMAN PRESIDENCY ... 901 The Fair Deal ... 901 ★ The Postwar Strike Wave ... 901 ★ The Republican
Resurgence ... 902 ★ Postwar Civil Rights ... 902 ★ To Secure These
Rights ... 904 ★ The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts ... 904 ★ The 1948
Campaign ... 905
THE ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE ... 906 Loyalty and Disloyalty ... 907 ★ The Spy Trials ... 908 ★ McCarthy and
McCarthyism ... 909 ★ An Atmosphere of Fear ... 909 ★ The Uses of
Anticommunism ... 910 ★ Anticommunist Policies ... 911
Voices of Freedom: From Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew
(1955), and From Henry Steele Commager, “Who Is Loyal to America?”
in Harper’s (September 1947) ... 912
The Cold War and Organized Labor ... 914 ★ Cold War Civil Rights ... 914
REVIEW ... 917
PA R T 6 : W H AT K I N D OF N AT ION?
19 5 3–20 12
2 4 . A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y, 19 5 3 –19 6 0 . . . 9 2 2
THE GOLDEN AGE ... 924 A Changing Economy ... 924 ★ A Suburban Nation ... 925 ★ The Growth
of the West ... 926 ★ A Consumer Culture ... 927 ★ The TV World ... 928 ★
A New Ford ... 929 ★ Women at Work and at Home ... 931 ★
A Segregated Landscape ... 932 ★ Public Housing and Urban Renewal
... 933 ★ The Divided Society ... 933 ★ Religion and Anticommunism ...
934 ★ Selling Free Enterprise ... 935 ★ People’s Capitalism ... 936 ★
The Libertarian Conservatives ... 937 ★ The New Conservatism ... 937
Contents
xxvii
THE EISENHOWER ERA ... 938 Ike and Nixon ... 938 ★ The 1952 Campaign ... 939 ★ Modern
Republicanism ... 940 ★ The Social Contract ... 941 ★ Massive Retaliation
... 941 ★ Ike and the Russians ... 942 ★ The Emergence of the Third World
... 943 ★ The Cold War in the Third World ... 944 ★ Origins of the Vietnam
War ... 945 ★ Mass Society and Its Critics ... 946 ★ Rebels without a
Cause ... 947 ★ The Beats ... 948
THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT ... 949 Origins of the Movement ... 949
Voices of Freedom: From Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at
Montgomery, Alabama (December 5, 1955), and From The Southern
Manifesto (1956) ... 950
The Legal Assault on Segregation ... 952 ★ The Brown Case ... 953 ★
The Montgomery Bus Boycott ... 954 ★ The Daybreak of Freedom ... 955 ★
The Leadership of King ... 956 ★ Massive Resistance ... 956 ★ Eisenhower
and Civil Rights ... 957 ★ The World Views the United States ... 958
THE ELECTION OF 1960 ... 959 Kennedy and Nixon ... 959 ★ The End of the 1950s ... 960
REVIEW ... 963
2 5 . T H E S I X T I E S , 19 6 0 –19 6 8 . . . 9 6 4 THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION ... 966
The Rising Tide of Protest ... 966 ★ Birmingham ... 966 ★ The March on
Washington ... 968
THE KENNEDY YEARS ... 969 Kennedy and the World ... 969 ★ The Missile Crisis ... 970 ★ Kennedy and
Civil Rights ... 971
LYNDON JOHNSON’S PRESIDENCY ... 972 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... 972 ★ Freedom Summer ... 973 ★ The
1964 Election ... 974 ★ The Conservative Sixties ... 975 ★ The Voting
Rights Act ... 976 ★ Immigration Reform ... 976 ★ The Great Society ... 977 ★
The War on Poverty ... 977 ★ Freedom and Equality ... 978
THE CHANGING BLACK MOVEMENT ... 979 The Ghetto Uprisings ... 979 ★ Malcolm X ... 981 ★ The Rise of Black
Power ... 981
VIETNAM AND THE NEW LEFT ... 982 Old and New Lefts ... 982 ★ The Fading Consensus ... 983 ★ The Rise of the
SDS ... 984 ★ America and Vietnam ... 985 ★ Lyndon Johnson’s War ... 986
Voices of Freedom: From Young Americans for Freedom, The Sharon
Statement (September 1960), and From Tom Hayden and Others,
The Port Huron Statement (June 1962) ... 988
xxviii
Contents
The Antiwar Movement ... 990 ★ The Counterculture ... 991 ★
Personal Liberation and the Free Individual ... 992 ★ Faith and the
Counterculture ... 992
THE NEW MOVEMENTS AND THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION ... 994
The Feminine Mystique ... 994 ★ Women’s Liberation ... 995 ★ Personal
Freedom ... 996 ★ Gay Liberation ... 997 ★ Latino Activism ... 997 ★ Red
Power ... 998 ★ Silent Spring ... 998 ★ The New Environmentalism ... 999 ★
The Rights Revolution ... 1000 ★ Policing the States ... 1001 ★ The Right
to Privacy ... 1002
1968 ... 1002 A Year of Turmoil ... 1002 ★ The Global 1968 ... 1004 ★ Nixon’s
Comeback ... 1005 ★ The Legacy of the Sixties ... 1005
REVIEW ... 1007
2 6 . T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E R V A T I S M , 19 6 9 –19 8 8 . . . 10 0 8
PRESIDENT NIXON ... 1009 Nixon’s Domestic Policies ... 1010 ★ Nixon and Welfare ... 1010 ★
Nixon and Race ... 1011 ★ The Burger Court ... 1012 ★ The Court and
Affirmative Action ... 1013 ★ The Continuing Sexual Revolution ... 1013 ★
Nixon and Détente ... 1014
VIETNAM AND WATERGATE ... 1016 Nixon and Vietnam ... 1016 ★ The End of the Vietnam War ... 1017 ★
Watergate ... 1018 ★ Nixon’s Fall ... 1019
THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE ... 1020 The Decline of Manufacturing ... 1020 ★ Stagflation ... 1020 ★ The
Beleaguered Social Compact ... 1021 ★ Labor on the Defensive ... 1022 ★
Ford as President ... 1023 ★ The Carter Administration ... 1023 ★ Carter
and the Economic Crisis ... 1024 ★ The Emergence of Human Rights
Politics ... 1025 ★ The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan ... 1026
THE RISING TIDE OF CONSERVATISM ... 1028 The Religious Right ... 1028 ★ The Battle over the Equal Rights
Amendment ... 1029 ★ The Abortion Controversy ... 1030 ★ The Tax
Revolt ... 1031 ★ The Election of 1980 ... 1032
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION ... 1033 Reagan and American Freedom ... 1033
Voices of Freedom: From Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and From
Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (1980) ... 1034
Reaganomics ... 1036 ★ Reagan and Labor ... 1037 ★ The Problem of
Inequality ... 1037 ★ The Second Gilded Age ... 1038 ★ Conservatives
Contents
xxix
and Reagan ... 1039 ★ Reagan and the Cold War ... 1040 ★ The Iran-
Contra Affair ... 1042 ★ Reagan and Gorbachev ... 1042 ★ Reagan’s
Legacy ... 1042 ★ The Election of 1988 ... 1043
REVIEW ... 1045
2 7. G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S , 19 8 9 – 2 0 0 0 . . . 10 4 6
THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD ... 1048 The Crisis of Communism ... 1048 ★ A New World Order? ... 1049 ★
The Gulf War ... 1050 ★ Visions of America’s Role ... 1051 ★ The Election
of Clinton ... 1051 ★ Clinton in Office ... 1052 ★ The “Freedom Revolution”
... 1053 ★ Clinton’s Political Strategy ... 1053 ★ Clinton and World Affairs
... 1055 ★ The Balkan Crisis ... 1055 ★ Human Rights ... 1056
A NEW ECONOMY? ... 1056 The Computer Revolution ... 1057 ★ The Stock Market Boom and Bust
... 1058 ★ The Enron Syndrome ... 1059 ★ Fruits of Deregulation ... 1060 ★
Rising Inequality ... 1060
Voices of Freedom: From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA
(1993), and From Global Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global
Democracy (December 1999) ... 1062
CULTURE WARS ... 1064 The Newest Immigrants ... 1065 ★ The New Diversity ... 1067 ★ African-
Americans in the 1990s ... 1070 ★ The Role of the Courts ... 1071 ★ The
Spread of Imprisonment ... 1071 ★ The Burden of Imprisonment ... 1072 ★
The Continuing Rights Revolution ... 1073 ★ Native Americans in 2000
... 1073 ★ Multiculturalism ... 1074 ★ The Identity Debate ... 1074 ★
Cultural Conservatism ... 1075 ★ “Family Values” in Retreat ... 1076 ★
The Antigovernment Extreme ... 1077
IMPEACHMENT AND THE ELECTION OF 2000 ... 1078 The Impeachment of Clinton ... 1078 ★ The Disputed Election ... 1079 ★
The 2000 Result ... 1080 ★ A Challenged Democracy ... 1080
FREEDOM AND THE NEW CENTURY ... 1081 Exceptional America ... 1081 ★ Varieties of Freedom ... 1083
REVIEW ... 1085
2 8 . A N E W C E N T U R Y A N D N E W C R I S E S . . . 10 8 6 THE WAR ON TERRORISM ... 1088
Bush before September 11 ... 1088 ★ “They Hate Freedom” ... 1089 ★
The Bush Doctrine ... 1090 ★ The “Axis of Evil” ... 1091 ★ The National
Security Strategy ... 1091
xxx
Contents
AN AMERICAN EMPIRE? ... 1092 Confronting Iraq ... 1092 ★ The Iraq War ... 1093
Voices of Freedom: From The National Security Strategy of the United
States (September 2002), and From President Barack Obama, Speech on
the Middle East (2011) ... 1094
Another Vietnam? ... 1096 ★ The World and the War ... 1096
THE AFTERMATH OF SEPTEMBER 11 AT HOME ... 1097
Security and Liberty ... 1097 ★ The Power of the President ... 1099 ★
The Torture Controversy ... 1100 ★ The Economy under Bush ... 1101
THE WINDS OF CHANGE ... 1102 The 2004 Election ... 1102 ★ Bush’s Second Term ... 1103 ★ Hurricane
Katrina ... 1103 ★ The New Orleans Disaster ... 1104 ★ The Immigration
Debate ... 1105 ★ Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations”
... 1106 ★ The Constitution and Liberty ... 1107 ★ The Court and the
President ... 1108 ★ The Midterm Elections of 2006 ... 1110 ★
The Housing Bubble ... 1111 ★ The Great Recession ... 1112 ★
“A Conspiracy against the Public” ... 1113 ★ The Collapse of Market
Fundamentalism ... 1114 ★ Bush and the Crisis ... 1115
THE RISE OF OBAMA ... 1116 The 2008 Campaign ... 1117 ★ Obama’s First Inauguration ... 1118 ★
Obama in Office ... 1118
OBAMA’S FIRST TERM ... 1120 The Continuing Economic Crisis ... 1120 ★ Obama and the World ... 1121 ★
The Republican Resurgence ... 1122 ★ The Occupy Movement ... 1123 ★
The 2012 Campaign ... 1124
LEARNING FROM HISTORY ... 1126
REVIEW ... 1129
A P P E N D I X DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776)...A-2 ★ The Constitution of
the United States (1787)...A-5 ★ From George Washington’s Farewell
Address (1796)...A-16 ★ The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and
Resolutions (1848)...A-21 ★ From Frederick Douglass’s “What, to the
Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” Speech (1852)...A-24 ★ The Gettysburg
Address (1863)...A-27 ★ Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
(1865)...A-28 ★ The Populist Platform of 1892...A-29 ★ Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933)...A-32 ★ From The
Contents
xxxi
Program for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
(1963)...A-35 ★ Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981)...A-36 ★
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009)...A-39
TABLES AND FIGURES Presidential Elections...A-42 ★ Admission of States...A-50 ★ Population
of the United States...A-51 ★ Historical Statistics of the United States:
Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed as a Percentage
of the Labor Force, 1800–2010...A-52 ★ Immigration, by Origin...A-52 ★ Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013...A-53 ★ Union Membership as a
Percentage of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2012...A-53 ★ Voter
Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012...A-53 ★ Birthrate,
1820–2011...A-53
GLOSSARY ★ ... A-55
CREDITS ★ ... A-79
INDEX ★ ... A-85
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xxxiii
M A P S CHAPTER 1 The First Americans...7 Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500...11 The Old World on the Eve of American Colonization,
ca. 1500...19 Voyages of Discovery...22 Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the
New World...32 The New World—New France and New Netherland,
ca. 1650...39
CHAPTER 2 English Settlement in the Chesapeake, ca. 1650...58 English Settlement in New England, ca. 1640...72
CHAPTER 3 Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and Early
Eighteenth Centuries...89 European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the
Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760...108
CHAPTER 4 Atlantic Trading Routes...129 The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World,
1460–1770...131 European Empires in North America, ca. 1750...153 Eastern North America after the Peace of Paris,
1763...159
CHAPTER 5 The Revolutionary War in the North, 1775–1781...196 The Revolutionary War in the South, 1775–1781...198 North America, 1783...201
CHAPTER 6 Loyalism in the American Revolution...220
CHAPTER 7 Western Lands, 1782–1802...241 Western Ordinances, 1784–1787...244 Ratification of the Constitution...262 Indian Tribes, 1790...264
CHAPTER 8 The Presidential Election of 1800...287 The Louisiana Purchase...293 The War of 1812...301
CHAPTER 9 The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals, 1840...310 The Market Revolution: Western Settlement,
1800–1820...313 Travel Times from New York City in 1800 and
1830...314
The Market Revolution: The Spread of Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840...316
Major Cities, 1840...320 Cotton Mills, 1820s...321
CHAPTER 10 The Missouri Compromise, 1820...357 The Americas, 1830...360 The Presidential Election of 1824...364 The Presidential Election of 1828...366 Indian Removals, 1830–1840...375 The Presidential Election of 1840...382
CHAPTER 11 Slave Population, 1860...392 Size of Slaveholdings, 1860...397 Distribution of Free Blacks, 1860...406 Major Crops of the South, 1860...409 Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic
World...417
CHAPTER 12 Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth
Century...428
CHAPTER 13 The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s...462 The Mexican War, 1846–1848...467 Gold-Rush California...470 Continental Expansion through 1853...472 The Compromise of 1850...476 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854...478 The Railroad Network, 1850s...480 The Presidential Election of 1856...485 The Presidential Election of 1860...494
CHAPTER 14 The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861...505 The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862...510 The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862...512 The Emancipation Proclamation...515 The Civil War, 1863...536 The Civil War, Late 1864–1865...542
CHAPTER 15 The Barrow Plantation...553 Sharecropping in the South, 1880...557 The Presidential Election of 1868...568 Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877...581 The Presidential Election of 1876...582
CHAPTER 16 The Railroad Network, 1880...592 U.S. Steel: A Vertically Integrated Corporation...596 Indian Reservations, ca. 1890...611 Political Stalemate, 1876–1892...617
xxxiv
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
CHAPTER 17 Populist Strength, 1892...640 The Presidential Election of 1896...644 The Spanish-American War: The Pacific...663 The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean...663 American Empire, 1898...665
CHAPTER 18 The World on the Move, World Migration
1815–1914...682 Socialist Towns and Cities, 1900–1920...690 The Presidential Election of 1912...710
CHAPTER 19 The Panama Canal Zone...717 The United States in the Caribbean,
1898–1941...718 Colonial Possessions, 1900...720 World War I: The Western Front...725 Prohibition, 1915: Counties and States That Banned
Liquor before the Eighteenth Amendment (Ratified 1919, Repealed 1933)...731
Europe in 1914...750 Europe in 1919...751
CHAPTER 20 The Presidential Election of 1928...790
CHAPTER 21 Columbia River Basin Project, 1949...801 The Presidential Election of 1932...802 The Tennessee Valley Authority...807 The Dust Bowl, 1935–1940...808
CHAPTER 22 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945...849 World War II in Europe, 1942–1945...851 Wartime Army and Navy Bases and
Airfields...854 Japanese-American Internment, 1942–1945...868
CHAPTER 23 Cold War Europe, 1956...892 The Korean War, 1950–1953...894 The Presidential Election of 1948...905
CHAPTER 24 The Interstate Highway System...930 The Presidential Election of 1952...939 The Presidential Election of 1960...960
CHAPTER 25 The Presidential Election of 1964...974 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975...987 The Presidential Election of 1968...1004
CHAPTER 26 Center of Population, 1790–2010...1011 The Presidential Election of 1976...1023 The Presidential Election of 1980...1032 The United States in the Caribbean and Central
America, 1954–2004...1041
CHAPTER 27 Eastern Europe after the Cold War...1050 The Presidential Election of 1992...1052 Maps of Diversity, 2000...1066 The Presidential Election of 2000...1080
CHAPTER 28 U.S. Presence in the Middle East, 1947–2012...1098 Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip...1099 The Presidential Election of 2008...1117 The Presidential Election of 2012...1126
T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S CHAPTER 1 Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations:
The Americas, ca. 1500...31 Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations:
The World, ca. 1500...31
CHAPTER 3 Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British
North American Colonies, 1700–1775...107
CHAPTER 4 Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of Total
Population of Original Thirteen Colonies, 1770...135
CHAPTER 7 Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population of
the United States, 1790...267
CHAPTER 9 Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western
States, 1800–1850...315 Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by Five-Year
Period...324 Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850...326
CHAPTER 11 Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population...393 Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850...394 Table 11.3 Free Black Population, 1860...407
CHAPTER 14 Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus
Confederacy...506
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
xxxv
CHAPTER 16 Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change,
1870–1920...590 Figure 16.1 Railroad Mileage Built, 1830–1975...591
CHAPTER 17 Table 17.1 States with over 200 Lynchings,
1889–1918...652
CHAPTER 18 Table 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920...681 Table 18.2 Immigrants and Their Children as Percentage
of Population, Ten Major Cities, 1920...683 Table 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Older
in the Labor Force, 1900–1930...684 Table 18.4 Percentage of Women Workers in Various
Occupations, 1900–1920...685 Table 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars, 1900–1925...686
CHAPTER 19 Table 19.1 The Great Migration...744
CHAPTER 20 Figure 20.1 Household Appliances,
1900–1930...762 Figure 20.2 The Stock Market, 1919–1939...765 Table 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas
under the 1924 Immigration Act...782
CHAPTER 21 Figure 21.1 The Building Boom and Its Collapse,
1919–1939...809 Figure 21.2 Unemployment, 1925–1945...824
CHAPTER 22 Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership...855
CHAPTER 24 Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita,
1790–2000...925 Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing...929 Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and Its Decline...931
CHAPTER 25 Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population below Poverty
Level, by Race, 1959–1969...978
CHAPTER 26 Figure 26.1 Median Age at First Marriage,
1947–1981...1013 Table 26.1 Rate of Divorce: Divorces of Existing
Marriages per 1,000 New Marriages, 1950–1980...1014
Table 26.2 The Misery Index, 1970–1980...1021 Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages,
1955–1990...1022 Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income,
1980–1990...1038
CHAPTER 27 Figure 27.1 U.S. Income Inequality,
1913–2003...1060 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United States,
1960–2010...1065 Figure 27.2 Birthplace of Immigrants,
1990–2000...1067 Figure 27.3 The Projected Non-White Majority:
Racial and Ethnic Breakdown...1069 Figure 27.4 Unemployment Rate by Sex and Race,
1954–2000...1070 Table 27.2 Home Ownership Rates by Group,
1970–2000...1070 Figure 27.5 Institutional Inmates as a Percentage of
the Population by Sex and Race, 1850–2010...1072
Figure 27.6 Change in Family Structure, 1970–2010...1076
Figure 27.7 Women in the Paid Workforce, 1940–2010...1077
CHAPTER 28 Figure 28.1 The Housing Bubble...1111 Figure 28.2 Portrait of a Recession...1112 Figure 28.3 Income Gains, 1947–2009...1121
For my mother,
Liza Foner (1909–2005),
an accomplished artist
who lived through
most of the twentieth century
and into the twenty-first
�
�
Preface
xxxix
P R E F A C E
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, con- cise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first three editions of Give Me Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and four-year colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Fourth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into account. I have also incorporated the find- ings and insights of new scholarship that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire to inte- grate the history of American religion more fully into the narrative. Today, this is
xl
Preface
a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the relations between government and religion and over the definition of religious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience. Changes relating to this theme may be found through- out the book, but some of the major additions seeking to illuminate the history of American religion are as follows:
Chapter 1 includes a new discussion of religious toleration and its limits in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland, which became New York after being seized by Great Britain in 1664. Chapter 2 expands the previous discus- sion of the complex relationship between church and state in Puritan New England. Chapter 4 examines the religious traditions brought to the American colonies by enslaved Africans. In Chapter 6, I have added a discussion of the Christian Repub- licanism of the era of the American Revolution, a set of ideas that linked public virtue in the new nation with religious conviction despite the separation of church and state. Chapter 9 now includes an extended discussion of the emergence of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (or the Mormon Church) and their experience of perse- cution, despite which they’ve become one of the largest and most rapidly growing denominations in the United States.
A further discussion of conflict between Mormons and other settlers in the West occurs in Chapter 16. That chapter also includes an expanded discussion of the Ghost Dance, an Indian religious movement of the late nineteenth century, and a new section on the role of Protestant leaders in the era’s moral reform campaigns. In Chapter 17, a new section discusses the religious dimensions of the revised “mem- ory” of the Civil War that rose to prominence in the 1890s. In Chapter 18, I have added a discussion of the spiritual elements in the early environmental movement, especially in relation to the career of the pioneer conservationist John Muir. The rise of religious fundamentalism, and its use of modern media like the radio to spread its message, is examined in Chapter 21. In Chapter 24, there is a new section on reli- gion and the anticommunist crusade of the 1950s. Chapter 25 now contains a sec- tion on religious movements that arose in connection with the counterculture of the 1960s. Finally, I have added to Chapter 28, the book’s final chapter, a new section on how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to profound controversy over the role of Islam in American life, a debate that continues to this day.
As in the Second and Third Editions, the Voices of Freedom sections in each chapter include two documents illustrating the contested history of freedom in the United States. I have changed a number of them to reflect the new emphasis on the history of American religion. I have also revised the end-of-chapter bibliographies to reflect current scholarship.
The Fourth Edition sports a bright, award-winning design featuring enhanced pedagogy to give students more guidance as they move through chapters. New topic flags function as chapter outlines on the page. They provide easy visual cues that correspond to major points in the narrative and are handy tools for review. The chronology at the beginning of the chapter and the end-of-chapter review pages, including review questions and key terms with page references, have been revisited
Preface
xli
for the Fourth Edition. The aim of the pedagogy, as always, is to offer students guid- ance through the material without getting in the way of the presentation.
I have also added new images in each chapter to expand the visual represen- tation of key ideas and personalities in the text. Taken together, I believe these changes enhance the purpose of Give Me Liberty!: to offer students a clear, concise, and thematically enriched introduction to American history.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Ameri- cans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of his- tory comes from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . . [that] history is literally pres- ent in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose govern- ment is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or immedi- ate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for exam- ple, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing. There is noth- ing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each gen- eration asks different questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, includ- ing women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprec- edented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional politi- cal and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the
xlii
Preface
experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious atten- tion to political, social, cultural, and economic history, and to their interconnec- tions. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary people who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of characters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suf- frage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed knowledge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the com- plexities of the subject without overwhelming them with excessive detail. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, has long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole.