Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FIFTH BRIEF EDITION

Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FIFTH BRIEF EDITION
Lecture Slides Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FIFTH BRIEF EDITION by Eric Foner

Chapter 19 Chapter 19 Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I, 1916–1920 The Spanish-American War made the United States an international empire, but compared to Europe’s colonial empires, its overseas possessions were small. America’s empire was not territorial so much as it was economic and cultural. At the start of the twentieth century, the world’s economy was already highly globalized, and although Britain still dominated world finance and its currency dominated world trade, the United States was the leading industrial power. By 1914, the year World War I began, the United States made more than a third of the world’s manufactured goods, and its steel, oil, agricultural equipment and consumer goods inundated European markets. Along with American goods moving to Europe were Americans, especially those from national and ethnic groups interested in the lands of their origins, such as Irish-Americans supporting independence from England, American Jews opposed to religious persecution in Russia, and black Americans hoping to uplift Africa. America’s increasing economic and cultural connections with the world led to elevated American military and political involvement. Between 1900 and 1920, many of the principles that guided American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century were formed, such as the “open door” policy that American trade, investment, information, and culture should flow freely to other nations and markets. Americans discussed their foreign policy in terms of freedom. Rhetorically, this was expressed in a widespread belief that America spread its power and influence in the world not out of narrow economic or strategic interests, but to promote universal ideals of liberty and democracy. Woodrow Wilson and his policy of “liberal internationalism” best represented this tendency, as Wilson believed that political freedoms would follow wherever American trade and investment flowed. World War I became the test for Wilson’s ideas and the Progressives who supported him and sought to make the war an opportunity to reform America and the world. Rather than bringing Progressivism to other peoples, the war destroyed it at home.

gassed John Singer Sargent’s Gassed (1919), depicts soldiers exposed to mustard gas. Many artists and intellectuals, including Sargent, concluded the war had been a ghastly mistake. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Lecture Preview An Era of Intervention America and the Great War
The War at Home Who Is an American? 1919 The subtopics for this lecture are listed on the screen above.

Focus Question: An Era of Intervention
In what ways did the Progressive presidents promote the expansion of American power overseas? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection, OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

Panama “I Took the Canal Zone”
Progressive-era presidents who expanded government power at home did so abroad as well. Initially, their interventions occurred in the Western Hemisphere, which the United States had made its sphere to oversee in the Monroe Doctrine of Between 1901 and 1920, U.S. Marines landed in Caribbean countries more than twenty times, usually to secure a better economic environment for American companies that wanted safe access to raw materials or bankers who wanted to ensure that loans were repaid. Roosevelt was far more engaged in international diplomacy than his predecessors, and while he disclaimed any American interest in acquiring overseas territory, he ordered multiple interventions in Central America. His first major action was engineering the separation of Panama from Colombia in order to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1903, when Colombia refused to cede land for the canal, Roosevelt helped to launch an uprising in Panama, and he deployed American gunboats to prevent the Colombian army from suppressing it. Having secured Panamanian independence and a treaty giving the United States the right to construct and operate a canal and sovereignty over the Canal Zone, Roosevelt launched one of the greatest construction and engineering projects in history. “I took the Canal Zone,” he later exclaimed. The project, finished in 1914, facilitated American and world trade by drastically cutting shipping times. But the Canal Zone would long remain a source of tension. Initiated by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the operation of the Canal Zone was handed over to Panama in 2000.

Global Police Power The Roosevelt Corollary
Roosevelt’s interventionist foreign policy came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This policy expressed the right of the United States to exercise “an international police power” in the Western Hemisphere, allowing it not just to prevent European intervention in the Americas, as the Monroe Doctrine specified, but forcibly to intervene whenever it was deemed necessary. Roosevelt feared that financial instability in the Americas simply invited European powers to intervene whenever they felt their investments were threatened. In 1904, Roosevelt invaded the Dominican Republic to ensure that its customs houses repaid debts to European and American investors. In 1906, he sent troops to Cuba to ensure stability after a disputed election; they stayed until President Taft sent Marines to Nicaragua to protect a government friendly to American economic interests, but he emphasized economic investment and loans from banks, rather than direct military intervention, as the best means to spread American influence. This policy became known as Dollar Diplomacy.

The world’s constable This cartoon, The World’s Constable, portrays Roosevelt as an impartial international policeman. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Wilson’s Foreign Policy
Moral Imperialism Wilson and Mexico The highly moralistic Woodrow Wilson brought a missionary zeal and sense of his own and America’s righteousness to foreign policy. He made William Jennings Bryan, an anti-imperialist, his secretary of state, and he repudiated Dollar Diplomacy and promised to respect Latin American independence and free it from economic domination. But Wilson believed the United States had a duty to instruct other nations in democracy and that American exports and investments spread American political ideals. For Wilson, American economic influence served a purpose higher than profit, and his “moral imperialism” made for more military interventions than any president before or since. He sent Marines to Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916 to protect American financial interests; they stayed in the latter country until 1924, and in the former until Wilson’s foreign policy illustrates a lasting paradox of modern American history: presidents speaking most about freedom were likely to intervene the most in other nations’ affairs. Wilson was most involved in Mexico, where a 1911 revolution led by Francisco Madero overthrew Porfirio Díaz’s long-standing dictatorship. In 1913, without Wilson’s knowledge but with the support of the U.S. ambassador and American companies controlling Mexico’s oil and mines, the military commander Victoriano Huerta assassinated Madero and seized power. Wilson was outraged, would not extend recognition, and vowed to “teach” Latin Americans “to elect good men.” When civil war erupted and Wilson sent troops to Vera Cruz to prevent arms shipments, they were met as invaders and attacked by Mexican troops. In 1916, after Mexican troops led by Pancho Villa killed Americans in a New Mexico town close to the border, Wilson ordered 10,000 American troops to invade northern Mexico to apprehend Villa. Revolutionary chaos continued during the next few years and Mexico provided a warning that it was potentially very difficult to use American power to control foreign policy.

Focus Question: America and the Great War
How did the United States get involved in World War I? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection, OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

Beginnings of the Great War
Neutrality and Preparedness In June 1914, the assassination in Bosnia of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, started a chain of events that engulfed Europe in the most devastating war the world had yet seen. European nations that were engaged in the scramble for colonies had entered into a series of alliances that sought military domination in Europe. Austria-Hungary soon declared war on Serbia. Because of the alliance system, Britain, France, Russia, and Japan soon found themselves at war with the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman empire, which included modern-day Turkey and much of the Middle East. After initial German victories, the war became mired in a long stalemate of bloody and indecisive battles. New technologies, such as submarines, airplanes, machine guns, tanks, and poison gas, produced unprecedented slaughter. In the five-month battle of Verdun in 1916, some 600,000 French and German soldiers died; 10 million soldiers and uncounted civilians perished in the conflict. The Great War inflicted a blow on the optimism and self-confidence of Western civilization, whose philosophers and statesmen had long celebrated reason and progress. The war also shocked the socialist and labor movements, which had valued international working-class solidarity over nationalism, only to see workers of different nations kill each other for their national governments. Americans were deeply divided over the war. Many Americans sided with Britain, associating it with liberty and democracy, and Germany with repressive and aristocratic government. Others, particularly German- and Irish-Americans, opposed supporting the British. Immigrants from Russia, especially Jews, also did not want America to support Russia and its czar, and the despotic Russia’s alliance with Britain and France made it hard to believe that the war was a conflict between democracy and autocracy. Many feminists, pacifists, and social reformers believed peace was necessary for reform at home, and they opposed American involvement. Wilson at first proclaimed U.S. neutrality, but naval warfare disrupted American commerce and threatened America’s neutral stance. In May 1915, German submarines sank the British liner Lusitania, killing nearly 1,200 passengers, including 124 Americans. Wilson protested strongly, and Americans were outraged, giving support to those who urged America to prepare for war.

WWI soldiers Albin Egger-Leinz’s 1917 painting portrays World War I soldiers as faceless automatons marching to the slaughter. The massive number of soldier deaths inspired widespread revulsion. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Peace postcard The Lusitania pictured on a postcard advocating peace. The ship’s sinking would strengthen the resolve of isolationist Americans to enter into a European war. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

U.S. involvement The Road to War The Fourteen Points
In May 1916, Wilson’s preparedness policy seemed to have worked, as Germany suspended submarine warfare against noncombatants, allowing Americans to trade and travel freely without requiring military action. “He kept us out of war” became Wilson’s campaign slogan in the 1916 presidential election. The Republican Party was reunited, and its candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, lost to Wilson by only a narrow margin, including the votes of women in western states. Germany soon resumed its submarine warfare against ships sailing to or from Great Britain and sank several American merchant ships, gambling that it could starve Britain into submission before America intervened militarily. In March 1917, British spies made public the Zimmerman Telegram, a message by the German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Mexico asking it to declare war against the United States and regain its territory lost in the Mexican War. On April 2, Wilson asked the Congress to declare war against Germany (which it did with a small minority of dissenters), in order to make the world “safe for democracy.” By the spring of 1918, when American troops arrived in Europe, the communist revolution led by Vladimir Lenin in Russia the previous November had led to the withdrawal of Russia from the war. Lenin also exposed secret treaties by which the Allies had agreed to divide conquered territory after the war, embarrassing Wilson. In January 1918, Wilson reassured the public that the war was a righteous cause by issuing the Fourteen Points, stating war aims and providing his vision of a new international order. This involved self-determination for all nations, freedom of the seas, free trade, open diplomacy, the adjustment of colonial claims with the colonized, and the establishment of a “general association of nations” to preserve peace. Wilson believed that this organization, which became the League of Nations, would act like the kinds of commissions Progressives had established in America for ensuring social harmony and protecting the weak. By September, nearly 1 million Americans helped turn the tide of the war and pushed German forces in retreat, especially in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. This campaign left 100,000 American soldiers dead and wounded, and was one of the most significant and deadliest battles in American history. With his forces retreating, on November 9, the German kaiser abdicated the throne, and two days later, Germany sued for peace. Over 100,000 Americans died, only 1 percent of the 10 million killed in the war.

The western front Map 19.4 World War I: The Western Front
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

A Wilson truck This 1916 photograph shows a truck campaigning for Wilson’s reelection. This new development in political campaigning spread Wilson’s message of peace, prosperity, and preparedness. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Focus Question: The War at Home
How did the United States mobilize resources and public opinion for the war effort? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

“social possibilities of war”
The Progressives’ War The Wartime State For most Progressives, the war offered the possibility of reforming American society along scientific lines. That American power could now disseminate Progressive values around the world heightened the war’s appeal. Virtually all Progressives rallied behind Wilson and the war, including intellectuals like John Dewey, journalists Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly, and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), to name a few. The war created a national government with unprecedented power and an increased presence in Americans’ lives. With the Selective Service Act of May 1918, 24 million men had to register for the draft. New federal agencies were created to regulate industry, transportation, labor relations, and agriculture. A War Industries Board oversaw all aspects of war production, from distributing raw materials to setting prices for manufactured goods, and it created standardized specifications for nearly everything. The Railroad Administration controlled the nation’s transportation, the Fuel Agency rationed coal and oil, and the Food Administration, directed by Herbert Hoover, helped farmers increase crop yields and promoted more efficient food preparation. These agencies generally saw themselves as friends to business as much as regulators of it, and they guaranteed government contractors a high rate of profit and encouraged cooperation among businesses by suspending antitrust laws. The War Labor Board, however, included representatives of government, industry, and the AFL, and instituted in some industries a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, and protections for unions. Wages rose significantly in the war, working conditions improved in many places, and union membership doubled. Corporate and income taxes soared. By 1918, the wealthiest Americans were paying 60 percent of their income in taxes and millions of Americans purchased Liberty bonds.

convincing the public The Propaganda War
Many Americans doubted whether America should intervene in a struggle between rival empires. Many outright opposed American entry into the war, as did groups such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and much of the Socialist Party. In April 1917, to counteract antiwar sentiment, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI), directed by George Creel, to run a campaign to build support for the war. The CPI enlisted academics, journalists, artists, and advertisers to flood the nation with prowar propaganda, from posters to movies. The administration and the CPI made its appeal in a Progressive language of social cooperation and expanded democracy. This meant a peace based on national self-determination abroad, and industrial democracy at home. The CPI tried to sell the war to workers as a fight for democracy by promising the eight-hour workday after the war. “Freedom” was also a key term in the mobilization, and the CPI argued that the war was being fought for “the great cause of freedom.” The Statue of Liberty was a common image in wartime propaganda, and was used especially to rally immigrants. Buying Liberty bonds became a way to demonstrate patriotism. The German nation and people were defined as the antithesis of freedom and depicted as barbaric Huns.

We are the barbarians This German propaganda piece entitled We are the Barbarians, refutes claims of barbarism. It compares the achievements of German social policy and education to England and France. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Women’s movements The Coming of Woman Suffrage Prohibition
The use of the words “democracy” and “freedom” as ideological war weapons inevitably sparked demands for their expansion at home. In 1916, Wilson seemed to endorse woman suffrage. But the war threatened to splinter the movement, as many in it opposed American intervention. Even the first woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, voted against American entry into the war. But most suffrage movement leaders and most women supported and participated in war mobilization, selling bonds, organizing patriotic rallies, and working in war production. A new and more militant generation of women activists, organized in the National Women’s Party, pushed for suffrage with tactics that scandalized older women activists, such as civil disobedience and demonstrations in front of the White House. Led by Alice Paul, these tactics, coupled with wartime service, pressured the White House to fully endorse woman suffrage, and in 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment, barring any state from using sex as a qualification for suffrage, was ratified. The United States became the twenty-seventh country to allow women to vote. The war also enhanced other women reformers’ campaigns, especially prohibition. Several factors helped finally to secure the prohibition of the sale of liquor nationwide, including employers’ interest in a more disciplined labor force, urban reformers who wanted orderly cities and to dismantle political machines that used saloons, and women reformers who wanted to protect wives and children from domestic abuse and the squandering of men’s wages for alcohol. Many native-born Protestants sought prohibition as a means to “Americanize” immigrants. Prohibitionists first focused on state campaigns, which were successful in more than a dozen states, but the war made beer, often brewed by German-Americans, unpopular. In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquors, and it took effect in 1920.

The awakening This 1915 cartoon shows western states that had guaranteed woman suffrage awakening and enlightening the eastern part of the nation. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Prohibition petitions
This 1916 cartoon from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union shows petitions for Prohibition flooding into Congress. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

stifling civil liberties
Liberty in Wartime The Espionage and Sedition Acts The war showed that during a conflict, civil liberties are often imperiled. Despite the Wilson administration’s idealistic rhetoric, the war initiated the most extreme repression of civil liberties in American history. The federal government passed laws severely restricting freedom of speech. The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited spying, interfering with the draft, and “false statements” that might impede military success. The postmaster general banned from the mails radical and socialist newspapers and other publications critical of the war and the draft. The Sedition Act, passed in 1918, made it a crime to make spoken or written statements intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the “form of government” or advocate disruption of the war effort. The government charged more than 2,000 people with violating these laws, and over half were convicted, the most prominent being Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, who, in 1918, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for delivering an antiwar speech. In 1920, Debs ran for president while still in prison and received 900,000 votes. He was released from prison by President Harding in 1921.

extreme repression Coercive Patriotism
More extreme repression was implemented by state government and private groups. Many states imprisoned those critical of the American flag, outlawed the possession of red and black flags (symbolizing communism and anarchism), and twenty-three states passed “criminal syndicalism” laws, making it illegal to advocate political change through unlawful acts or “a change in industrial ownership.” Patriotism came to be synonymous with support for the government, the war, and the American economic system, while antiwar sentiment, labor radicalism, and sympathy for the Russian Revolution became “un-American.” Local authorities investigated residents who did not buy Liberty Loans. Schools revised their curriculum to ensure its patriotism and required teachers to sign loyalty oaths. The 250,000 members of the American Protective League helped the Justice Department identify radicals and critics of the war by spying on neighbors and carrying out “slacker raids,” stopping thousands of men in major cities and requiring them to produce draft cards. Private groups used the war as an opportunity to attack their enemies, as was the case with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members were attacked (some killed), and whose leadership was arrested. Even though some Progressives protested individual incidents, most Progressives did not challenge the general atmosphere of repression.

New York/liberty This 1918 Florine Stettheimer painting depicts the idea of freedom in the wake of WWI in an exuberant tribute to New York City. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Focus Question: Who Is an American?
How did the war affect race relations in the United States? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection, OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

the American “race” The “Race Problem”
Progressivism anticipated in many ways major twentieth-century developments, including the New Deal, the Great Society, and the socially active state. But by accepting “race” as a permanent and defining characteristic of individuals and groups, Progressives were more like nineteenth-century thinkers than twentieth-century liberals. What was called the “race problem” was a major subject of debate before World War I, and it referred to more than just relations between blacks and whites. In 1911, the U.S. Immigration Commission listed in one of its publications forty-five different immigrant “races,” each with its own alleged innate characteristics, ranging from Anglo-Saxons at the top of the racial hierarchy down to Hebrews, Northern Italians, and, at the bottom, southern Italians—those apparently the most violent, undisciplined, and incapable of assimilation. Popular writers asserted that the wave of new immigration and white women’s declining birthrate threatened American civilization. The new science of eugenics, the study of the alleged mental traits of different races, lent scientific legitimacy to the new nativism. The nationalization of politics and the economy seemed to elevate consciousness of ethnic and racial difference and caused some to call for “Americanization”—the creation of a more homogeneous national culture. Randolph Bourne wrote in a 1916 essay, “Trans-National America,” that there was “no distinctive American culture.”

suspicions of others The Anti-German Crusade
Americanization efforts took on a new urgency and became more extreme during World War I, especially affecting German-Americans, who numbered 9 million by Before the war, many Americans admired German culture, including its music, literature, and philosophy. But when America declared war, the German language and German culture became a target of prowar organizations. German was banned in schools, German music was banned in many communities, and German terms became Americanized (“hamburger” became “liberty sandwich”).

Closing borders Toward Immigration Restriction
Groups Apart: Mexicans and Asian-Americans Even while Americanization efforts sought to assimilate immigrants, the war reinforced the idea that certain kinds of undesirables ought to be excluded from the country. Some argued that the new immigrants appreciated democracy less than Anglo-Saxons, as they seemed more likely to embrace radical doctrines like socialism and anarchism, while others argued that immigrants’ and blacks’ lower scores on “intelligence quotient” (IQ) scores, invented in 1916 for examining army recruits, required restrictions. In 1917, Congress, over Wilson’s veto, required that immigrants be literate in English or another language. Ten years later, the Supreme Court upheld laws authorizing doctors to sterilize the mentally ill to prevent them from reproducing; “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. By the 1960s, some 63,000 persons had been involuntarily sterilized. Americanization assumed that European immigrants, and especially their children, could eventually adjust to American life, adopt American ideals, and become citizens who enjoyed America’s freedoms. This assumption did not apply to non-white immigrants or blacks, who faced persistent exclusion. Wartime labor demands increased the immigration of Mexicans, who were exempted from 1917 literacy rules. But though Mexicans were legally considered white, state and local officials in the Southwest discriminated against Mexicans in a system of segregation that affected schools, hospitals, and theaters, not unlike Jim Crow in the South. Although Congress conferred citizenship on Puerto Ricans on the eve of World War I, and Puerto Rican men became subject to the draft and served in the war, Puerto Ricans were still not allowed to vote for president or have representation in Congress. Most restrictive were policies toward Asian-Americans. In 1907, Roosevelt negotiated a Gentlemen’s Agreement in which Japan agreed to end further Japanese migration, except for the wives and children of men already in the country. In 1913, California banned all aliens incapable of becoming naturalized citizens (e.g., Asians) from owning or leasing land.

Black experiences The Color Line Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race
African-Americans, members of the largest non-white group in America, were excluded from almost all Progressive ideas of freedom. They were disenfranchised in the South, barred from most unions and skilled jobs, most black women worked outside of the home for low wages in jobs not covered by new state-level protections for working women, and most blacks, who were desperately poor, could not participate in the new consumer economy. Nearly all Progressive intellectuals, social scientists, labor reformers, and suffrage advocates were unconcerned by conditions facing black Americans. The Progressive presidents shared dominant racial attitudes regarding blacks. Theodore Roosevelt’s celebration of Anglo-Saxon supremacy led him to call Indians savages and state that blacks were unfit to exercise the suffrage. Not even Jane Addams, a supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), resisted the abandonment of a civil rights plank in the 1912 Progressive Party platform. Woodrow Wilson, a Virginia native, celebrated the South’s “genuine representative government.” He imposed racial segregation in federal agencies in Washington, D.C., fired black federal employees, and screened at the White House the premier of Birth of a Nation, a film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as having defended white civilization during Reconstruction. African Americans understandably remained skeptical of the nation’s claim of freedom.

Birth of a nation This 1915 poster advertised Birth of a Nation, a film glorifying the founding of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. The film premiered at the White House and was screened by Woodrow Wilson. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © 2017 W. W. Norton & Company

A Missouri lynching This 1906 cartoon from the St. Louis Dispatch comments on the lynching of three black men in Missouri. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Black responses W. E. B. Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest
Closing Ranks Black leaders in this period tried to renew America’s Reconstruction-era commitment to racial equality. No other leader did more to renew the movement for black freedom than scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, a Massachusetts native and Harvard graduate. In his book, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), he called on blacks to reject the accommodationism of Booker T. Washington. Du Bois believed that educated African-Americans like himself were a “talented tenth” who could use their education and talent to fight inequality. In 1905, Du Bois gathered black leaders at Niagara Falls in Canada and launched the Niagara movement, which demanded the restoration of black rights to vote, an end to segregation, and complete equality in economic and educational opportunities—the agenda of black struggles for racial justice for the rest of the twentieth century. In 1909, Du Bois joined with mostly white reformers to organize the NAACP, which launched a legal strategy to win the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that at first accomplished little. Overall, the Progressive era saw virtually no progress toward racial justice. Among black Americans, wartime talk of freedom sparked hopes for radical changes in race relations. Most black leaders saw American participation in the war as an opportunity to win freedom for blacks at home. Du Bois himself called on African-Americans to “close ranks” and enlist in the army, believing that blacks’ sacrifices would earn them rights upon returning to America. But this did not happen, as the navy barred blacks entirely and the segregated army assigned most of the 400,000 black soldiers who served to supply units rather than combat. African American soldiers were treated as equals by French civilians, which the U.S. Army protested.

The migration series The Migration Series (1915) painted by Jacob Lawrence, was inspired by the migration of African Americans to the North during and after WWI. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © 2017 W. W. Norton & Company

migration and conflict
The Great Migration Racial Violence, North and South The Rise of Garveyism The war sparked social changes that transformed American race relations. Increased war production and a sharp decline in European immigration made available thousands of industrial jobs to blacks for the first time, inspiring a mass migration from South to North. When the war began, 90 percent of American blacks lived in the South, and most northern cities had small black populations. Between 1910 and 1920, half a million blacks left the South, moving to large cities like New York and Chicago and smaller cities such as Akron, Buffalo, and Trenton. The desire for work and higher wages, education, an escape from the threat of violence, and the vote motivated African-Americans to participate in the Great Migration. Yet, these migrants encountered considerable disappointments, including limited employment opportunities, exclusion from unions, housing segregation, and outbreaks of violence. Dozens of blacks were killed in a 1917 riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, where blacks had been recruited to weaken unions. In 1919, more than 250 people died in riots in northern cities, most notably in Chicago. But racial violence also exploded in the South where, in the year after the war, dozens were lynched, including black veterans who wore their uniforms, and striking black sharecroppers were massacred by white vigilantes. The worst race riot in American history occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, where more than 300 blacks were killed and thousands made homeless by a white mob including police and National Guard, after black veterans tried to prevent the lynching of a youth who had accidentally tripped and fallen on a white female elevator operator, sparking rumors of rape. Racial violence during the war inspired a new spirit of militancy among African-Americans. In northern cities, many blacks supported the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a movement for African independence and black self-reliance launched by Marcus Garvey, a recent immigrant from Jamaica. The Garveyites’ idea of freedom was self-determination for blacks, who should enjoy the same international recognition as a nation as other peoples after the war. While Du Bois and other black leaders viewed Garvey as a dangerous demagogue and welcomed Garvey’s deportation after his conviction for mail fraud, the Garveyite movement demonstrated blacks’ sense of betrayal in the postwar period.

The great migration CITY BLACK POPULATION, 1910 1920 PERCENT INCREASE
New York 91,709 152,467 66.3% Philadelphia 84,459 134,229 58.9 Chicago 44,103 109,458 148.2 St. Louis 43,960 69,854 Detroit 5,741 40,838 611.3 Pittsburgh 25,623 37,725 47.2 Cleveland 8,448 34,451 307.8 Table 19.1 The Great Migration Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Tulsa riots Tulsa burns in a 1921 race riot in which 300 people died. The riot was the worst outbreak of racial violence in American history. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Focus Question: 1919 Focus Question:
Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world? The purpose of the focus questions is to help students find larger themes and structures to bring the historical evidence, events, and examples together for a connected thematic purpose. As we go through each portion of this lecture, you may want to keep in mind how the information relates to this larger thematic question. Here are some suggestions: write the focus question in the left or right margin on your notes and as we go through, either mark areas of your notes for you to come back to later and think about the connection, OR as you review your notes later (to fill in anything else you remember from the lecture or your thoughts during the lecture or additional information from the readings), write small phrases from the lecture and readings that connect that information to each focus question AND/OR are examples that work together to answer the focus question.

Chaos at home and abroad
A Worldwide Upsurge Upheaval in America Fervent hopes for social change and disappointment with the war’s aftermath went beyond the black community. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union as Russia was renamed after the revolution, Lenin’s government nationalized landholdings, banks, and factories, and was proclaimed a workers’ state. The Russian revolution and democratic longings unleashed by World War I sent hope and fear throughout the world. The year 1919 also saw enormous turmoil in America. Amid racial violence and a devastating flu epidemic, a bombing campaign targeted the homes of prominent Americans. More significant was an upsurge in the labor movement, as workers took Wilson’s promises of industrial democracy and freedom seriously. In 1919, more than 4 million workers went on strike—the greatest wave of labor unrest in U.S. history. They faced an unprecedented mobilization of employers, government, and private patriotic organizations. The strike wave began in January in Seattle, where a shipyard workers’ strike became a general strike that paralyzed the city. In September, Boston police went on strike, and Governor Calvin Coolidge fired the entire force and called out the National Guard. A massive coal strike was ended only by a federal injunction. The 1919 steel strike was the era’s greatest labor revolt. Centered in Chicago, it brought together 365,000 mostly immigrant workers who demanded union recognition, higher wages, and an eight-hour workday in an industry that arbitrarily established wages and working conditions and suppressed all union activity. During the war, large numbers of workers joined the steel workers’ union, and by the end of 1918 they had won the eight-hour day. But employers resumed opposing the union after the war, and they responded to the strike by appealing to nativism among native-born workers, many of whom returned to work, and by painting the union and strike as inspired by the IWW, communism, and disloyalty. Public opinion’s turn against the strikers, along with police attacks, led to the strike’s defeat in early 1920.

Raiding the communists
Local police with literature seized from a Communist Party office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 1919. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

labor unrest and communist threats
The Red Scare The wartime repression of dissent persisted and peaked in the Red Scare of 1919–1920, which was inflamed by the postwar strike wave and social tensions and fears caused by the Russian Revolution. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, certain that the steel strike was part of a global communist conspiracy, ordered federal raids on radical and labor organizations, led by the young director of the Radical Division of the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover. More than 5,000 were arrested, most without warrants, and held for months without charge. The government deported hundreds of immigrant radicals, including Emma Goldman. This assault on civil liberties was so extreme that heavy criticism was leveled at Palmer by Congress and the press, and the scare dissolved. Though it generated a new concern for civil liberties in the 1920s, the Red Scare successfully destroyed radical groups such as the IWW and Socialist Party.

Wilson in Paris Wilson at Versailles The Wilsonian Moment
Wilson’s failure to gain a just peace at Versailles based on his Fourteen Points exacerbated many Progressives’ sense that the war would not fundamentally transform society and government. In late 1918, Wilson traveled to France for the Versailles peace conference, and was welcomed by ordinary Europeans as a hero. But while Wilson’s Fourteen Points had called for open diplomacy, the Versailles talks were held in secret. The Versailles Treaty did accomplish some of Wilson’s hopes, including the establishment of a League of Nations to supervise a new international order, and it applied national self-determination to eastern Europe, making new nations from the ruins of the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire and Germany. But despite Wilson’s opposition to a peace based on territorial acquisition or revenge, the Versailles Treaty included both, virtually guaranteeing future conflict. France won the right to occupy iron and coal-rich regions of Germany, strict limits were imposed on Germany’s future army and navy, and Germany was required to make reparations payments so high they devastated the German economy. The war damaged Europeans’ claims to be a higher civilization with the right to rule lesser peoples and elevated the international prestige of the United States. Wilson’s language of self-determination inspired minority groups and colonial peoples across the world, but they took this rhetoric more seriously than he did. Wilson’s idea of an equality of nations clashed with European rulers’ wishes to rebuild their empires in the postwar period. They rejected the appeals of colonial figures for independence such as Nguyen That Thanh, the future Ho Chi Minh, who went to Versailles to ask for freedom from French colonial rule. The British and French had no intention of applying self-determination to their colonies. The Ottoman empire was divided into nations such as Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, over which the British and French were given “mandates” to govern. Former German colonies in Africa were given to South Africa, Australia, and Japan, and Ireland was not given its independence.

Europe in 1914 Map 19.6a Europe in 1914

Europe in 1919 Map 19.6b Europe in 1919

Wilson Arrives in Paris
Part of the crowd that gathered to welcome Wilson to Paris in 1918. Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

future conflict The Seeds of Wars to Come The Treaty Debate
Widespread disappointment among colonial peoples that the Fourteen Points had not been applied to the non-European world created cynicism regarding the West’s language of freedom and democracy. Wilson’s apparent capitulation to the claims of European empires sparked popular anti-Western nationalist movements across the world, including the May 4 movement in China and the communist movement in Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh. Lenin in fact spoke of “the right of nations to self-determination” before Wilson, and with the end of the Wilsonian moment, Lenin’s reputation supplanted that of America’s president. These movements, whether or not they were communist, signaled the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism as a major force in the twentieth century. Ironically, when colonial peoples demanded to be recognized as independent members of the international community, they invoked the legacy of the American Revolution as the first colonial struggle to establish an independent nation and Wilson’s language of self-governing and equal nation-states as the most legitimate form of government and world order. Wilson, upon returning to the United States from Versailles, saw the League of Nations as the war’s most important legacy. But many Americans feared that League membership would force the United States into open-ended commitments in the affairs of other nations. Wilson argued that the United States could not save the world without being continually involved with it. His opponents, led by Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, argued the League would limit America’s freedom of action. Wilson refused to compromise, and in the midst of the League debate, he suffered a massive stroke that left him incapacitated. His wife, Edith, effectively assumed his office for seventeen months. The Senate twice rejected the Versailles Treaty. In the war’s immediate aftermath, the United States retreated from international affairs. Over the long term, however, Wilson’s idealism and power politics shaped the fundamentals of American foreign policy in the twentieth century—a commitment to democracy, open markets and trade, and America’s special mission to instruct the world in freedom, and the will for military intervention abroad to promote American interests and values. But the war had not made the world safe or democratic, it undermined freedom in the United States, and it led to the defeat of Progressivism. Republican Warren G. Harding, part of the party’s conservative wing and elected president in 1920, repudiated “Wilsonism” and promised a “return to normalcy,” thus inaugurating one of the most conservative decades in the nation’s history.

Interrupting the ceremony
Interrupting the Ceremony, a 1918 cartoon from the Chicago Tribune depicts Senate opponents stopping the passage of the Versailles Treaty in order to rid the United States of “foreign entanglements.” Give Me Liberty!: An American History, 5th Brief Edition Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company

Review An Era of Intervention America and the Great War
Focus Question: In what ways did the Progressive presidents promote the expansion of American power overseas? America and the Great War Focus Question: How did the United States get involved in World War I? The War at Home Focus Question: How did the United States mobilize resources and public opinion for the war effort?

Review Continued Who Is an American? 1919
Focus Question: How did the war affect race relations in the United States? 1919 Focus Question: Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world?

MEDIA LINKS —— Chapter 19 ——
Title Media link Eric Foner on Wilsonianism and the Versailles treaty Wilsonianism and the Versailles Treaty Eric Foner on World War I, pt 1: effects on civil liberty World War I, pt 1: Effects on Civil Liberty Eric Foner on World War I, pt, 2: Treaty of Versailles's continued harm World War I, pt 2: Treaty of Versailles's Continued Harm Eric Foner on World War I, pt, 3: perennial questions in American history World War I, pt 3: Perennial Questions in American History

Next Lecture PREVIEW: —— Chapter 20 —— From Business Culture to Great Depression: The Twenties, 1920–1932 The Business of America Business and Government The Birth of Civil Liberties The Culture Wars The Great Depression

Independent and Employee-Owned
Norton Lecture Slides Independent and Employee-Owned This concludes the Norton Lecture Slide Set for Chapter 19 Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FIFTH BRIEF EDITION by Eric Foner

Give Me Liberty! AN AMERICAN HISTORY FIFTH BRIEF EDITION

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