American Society - Social

Question 1

Introduction:

Answer 1

Between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and 1890, the United States experienced the growing pains of a great nation. The dynamic expansion of the United States, in territory, in population, and in economic growth, led to massive social and cultural changes. These changes had many positive effects and were frequently regarded with enthusiastic approval by many Americans, foreign observers, and by millions of immigrants coming to America in search of freedom and a better economic future. But the rapid transformation of American society exacerbated existing divisions and also created new ones

Question 2

Nation of immigrants:

Answer 2

Immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century (1800s) came mostly from northern Europe. From the 1820s, many Scandinavians settled in the Midwest and the Great Lakes region. Many German-speaking immigrants came too, especially the ‘Forty-Eighters’ who left Europe after the failed 1848-49 revolution

From the 1840s there was a surge in emigration from Ireland after the great famine. Later waves of emigrants were drawn to areas already settled by their compatriots, reassured by familiar language and customs

Question 3

Immigration to the United States, 1861-90

Answer 3

• 1861-70: 2.3 million
• 1871-80: 2.9 million
• 1881-90: 5.2 million

Question 4

Mass immigration:

Answer 4

The United States was already a nation of immigrants long before 1865. The original Thirteen Colonies were populated by settlers from northern Europe. In the nineteenth century, new waves of immigrants landed in America, mostly Germans, Swedes, Irish and Scots. After the American Civil War a new surge began: from the 1860s to 1890 there were more than 10 million immigrants

Immigration to the United States was pulled in by powerful social and economic forces (pull factors). There was empty land to be filled, expanding industries in need of a labour force, and, among most Americans, a willingness to welcome new arrivals to the ‘land of the free’. The Statue of Liberty that dominated New York harbour from 1886 was a potent symbol of this. Many immigrants were actively recruited by shipping companies. Systems were put in place to facilitate entry to America, notably a reception centre for arriving immigrants at Castle Garden on the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York

Question 5

Where immigrants settled:

Answer 5

The early waves of Scandinavian and German immigrants mostly settled in rural areas. Irish immigrants were more likely to settle in urban areas, such as New York, Boston and Chicago. As industrialisation and urbanisation developed, more and more immigrants were sucked into the expanding towns and cities. The immigrants were not all from Europe. Many thousands of non-Europeans also arrived, many of them Chinese labourers employed in the construction of western sections of the great transcontinental railroads

Many Americans believed optimistically that the ‘melting pot’ of the United States would forge new American citizens, though there were also pessimists who worried about possible tensions between peoples of so many different languages and religions

Question 6

Demographic change of immigrants:

Answer 6

Mass immigration was part of significant demographic change. The population increased sharply, not only because of immigration but also because death rates declined and more people lived longer. There was also a shift in population through urbanisation, as industrialisation and improvements in transportation drew people into the expanding towns and cities

The population patterns of the growing towns and cities reflected the influx of immigrants. Districts of big cities became ‘Irish’, or ‘German’, or ‘Chinatown’. The suburb of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati in Ohio became a community of unmistakably German cultural traditions. Milwaukee in Wisconsin became a German American city of breweries and German-language newspapers

Question 7

The consequences of immigration and urbanisation for American society and culture:

Answer 7

The speed and intensity of immigration created tensions and social divisions. New immigrant communities were often regarded with suspicion and hostility; they were seen as a threat to jobs, or to existing social and cultural norms. Nativism (the preserving of American values against ‘alien’ ways from American’s whose parents were born in the US) grew, as groups tried to preserve established American values from foreign influences. There were tensions between ‘new’ immigrants and those who had settled in the previous generation. Within immigrant communities, even within families or within the same person, there were contradictory feelings: on the one hand wishing to be a good American, on the other hand wanting to cling to the old ways

Question 8

Yellow Peril:

Answer 8

These tensions often reflected class prejudices and racial or religious prejudices. There was a particularly strong reaction against Chinese Americans, with newspapers and politicians campaigning fiercely to stop the ‘Yellow Peril’ of Chinese immigration. This pressure pushed Congress into passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, stopping the immigration of skilled or unskilled Chinese workers. It prevented Chinese people already in the US from gaining American citizenship, and made it hard for them to return if they visited China

The term ‘Yellow Peril’ is thought to have been first used in 1895 by the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, but it expressed a race-conscious fear of the rise of China and Japan that was already current in Britain and the United States

Question 9

Intolerance towards Chinese Americans:

Answer 9

American attitudes towards Chinese immigrants in the 1870s and 1880s were complex. Chinese immigrants had started coming into California at the time of the 1849 Gold Rush and had established settled communities in West Coast cities, especially San Francisco. In the 1860s, thousands of Chinese labourers were brought in to work on the construction of the western sections of the Union Pacific railroad. Afterwards, many of them moved to swell the existing Chinese American communities in California. Chinese workers provided half the labour force for San Francisco’s key industries: boots and shoes, wool textiles, tobacco and cigar-making, and sewing. Many Chinese also worked on the farms, especially in fruit-growing

Chinese workers were cheap, hard-working and caused few social disturbances. Many employers admired their disciplined work ethic; some Southern plantation owners thought the Chinese would make far better workers than black freedmen. But in many parts of white society, Chinese, African-Americans and Native Americans were lumped together as ‘coloured’ and ‘alien’. The economic depression that followed the 1873 stock market panic also accentuated fears that cheap Chinese labour would undermine white workers. By 1879, President Hayes was warning America about the ‘present Chinese invasion’ - the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress three years later. The Act was the first-ever restriction on immigration to specify a particular ethnic group. It was originally to run for ten years, but it was renewed in 1892 and again in 1902. It was finally repealed in 1943

Question 10

Social divisions - Granger movement:

Answer 10

Social divisions were not all related to the consequences of mass immigration. Reacting against the rise of industrial capitalism, farmers and workers set up organisations such as the Granger movement and the Knights of Labor to defend their interests. The emerging middle classes organised pressure groups to fight back against the rise of big business

The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry (Granger Movement) was founded in 1867 with the aim of bringing farmers together to promote agriculture and the community; the movement gained strong support in the South and West and was al forerunner of Populism (putting forward policies that your supporters want in order to secure their vote)

Question 11

Social divisions - Female Suffrage:

Answer 11

Another widening division was the struggle for female suffrage (women’s right to vote) and social equality for women. The fight for women’s rights was already being fought before the Civil War. The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 launched the feminist campaign for female suffrage; women’s groups were active in the temperance movement - which campaigned for restrictions on alcohol, and the fight to abolish slavery. The struggle for women’s rights touched on many social divisions: between feminists and the men who resisted their cause, and between conservative and radical women’s groups, who split apart on the issue of voting rights for African-American males being given priority in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments at the expense of women, black and white

Question 12

The split of female suffrage:

Answer 12

The split between radical women’s leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the more conservative wing of the women’s movements, lasted for more than 20 years until 1890, when a unified National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was established. It was not until 1920 that Congress finally passed the Nineteenth Amendment, often referred to as the ‘Susan B. Anthony Amendment’, which ensured universal female suffrage; but the campaigns of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony had lasting influence

Question 13

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902):

Answer 13

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leading figure in the fight for female suffrage from 1848, when she took part in the Seneca Falls convention; she was also a prominent campaigner for the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Stanton caused a split in the women’s movement by not supporting the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, because she insisted that women’s voting rights should be equal to those of African-American males. In 1890 she became president of the reunified National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1892 she was part of a female delegation presenting the argument for female suffrage to Congress

Question 14

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906):

Answer 14

Susan B. Anthony was a social reformer and campaigner for voting rights for women, the abolition of slavery and the temperance movement. She worked closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton; they founded the American Equal Rights Association in 1866. In 1872, Anthony was arrested and fined for voting in the mid-term elections. In 1878 she played a key role in presenting to Congress a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. Congress finally passed the ‘Susan B. Anthony Amendment’ in 1921, 15 years after she died

Question 15

Regional divisions: The North and East

Answer 15

The effects of industrialisation, urbanisation and shifts in population were most notable in the North and East, in the booming cities and economic hubs of New York, Chicago, the Great Lakes, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Between 1860 and 1890, the population of New York City doubled; in those years the population of Chicago increased tenfold, from just over 100,000 to more than 1 million. It was in the North and East that urban populations grew fastest, railroads made their biggest impact, and big business had the greatest influence over state and federal governments

Tensions caused by the power of the railroads boiled over in the Great Railroad Strike of July 1877. This began at Martinsburg in West Virginia, with workers fighting wage cuts by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Unrest soon spread into Maryland, where there was street fighting between strikers and troops of the National Guard. Strikes then broke out in Pennsylvania, with violent clashes in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where the Union rail depot was set on fire and more than 40 people were killed by militiamen. There were also major confrontations in Chicago and St Louis. After two weeks of upheaval, President Hayes sent several thousand federal troops to restore order

Mass immigration and rapid urbanisation brought ethnic tensions and social unrest to major cities, with threats of gang warfare and serious outbreaks of violence, such as the Orange Riots between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics in New York in 1870 and 1871. Powerful Irish gangs dominated Chicago’s South Side from the 1870s, terrorising immigrant groups who arrived in the city, such as Italians, Jews and Poles

Question 16

Orange Riots:

Answer 16

On 12 July 1870, 8 people were killed when a march through New York by ‘Orangemen’ (Irish Protestants) was heckled and attacked by Irish Catholic workmen. The next Orange parade in 1871, led to major rioting and resulted in the death of 60 civilians

Question 17

Regional divisions - The New South:

Answer 17

The obvious division in the Reconstruction South, between freed African-Americans and the former slave-owning white society, obscured many other important social divisions. Many social groups in the New South were discontented and disillusioned. There was resentment and class conflict within elements of white society, especially among poorer farmers. There were differences, too, among African-Americans, uncertain whether to be radical or moderate in pursuing their goals

The greatest division of all, however, was the gulf between the South and the rest of the country. The New South was very much the Old South: the eleven states of the Confederacy where deep feelings of displacement and alienation persisted. The South could not easily let go of the grievances of defeat, or the sentimental attachment to a lost way of life and a lost position at the forefront of American politics. This bitterness showed in the violence and discrimination against African-Americans, the determination to rebuild segregation, and the endless complaints against the ‘Yankees’ (Northerners), ‘carpetbaggers’ (Northern merchants accused of robbing valuables from the South) and ‘scalawags’ (Southerners who collaborated with Northerners to enrich themselves) who had looted and betrayed the South after the end of the Civil War

Question 18

Regional divisions - The Wild West:

Answer 18

On one level, the rapid settlement of the American West by 1890 was a matter of government policy: wars, treaties and government policies through the US Army and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But it was also the result of the actions of ordinary Americans: farmers, ranchers, miners, hunters and small businessmen. Government policy was frequently overtaken by social forces it could not easily control. Treaties with Indian Nations were undermined by the actions of whites, such as the gold prospectors who poured into the Black Hills of the Dakotas from 1874, breaking the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and causing renewed war against the Plains Indians

Life in the West was fast-changing and transient. Mining towns like Virginia City in Nevada had sudden booms and then were deserted when the prospectors and speculators discovered mineral riches somewhere else. The age of cattle drives, ranch wars and stagecoaches soon gave way to the age of the railroad. As early as 1883, the West was passing from history into myth and popular entertainment as the former frontier scout William Cody toured the country with his stage show, ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’

The mythic idea of the West was deeply ingrained in the minds of Americans: a land of wide spaces waiting to be tamed by tough, self-sufficient pioneers who represented the best American values. The real history of the West was much darker and more complicated. The army was used to drive out the Indians, buffalo herds were slaughtered, boom-and-bust mining towns ripped out the West’s mineral resources. All this left behind derelict ghost towns and a scarred natural environment

Question 19

Native Americans:

Answer 19

There were many divisions and rivalries in the new West: between small farmers and the banks, railroads and land companies; and between rival towns and rival businessmen. But the overriding division was between white settlers and Native Americans. By 1890 the way of life of the Indian nations had gone forever, with the open spaces fenced, tribal lands parcelled out to settlers, and Native Americans confined to small, uneconomic reservations. Native Americans were to be marginalised, made almost invisible, until the federal government under Franklin Roosevelt tried to repair the damage in the ‘Indian New Deal’ of 1934

Question 20

Protest movements:

Answer 20

It was not only Native Americans who were marginalised by the rush to exploit the West. The farmers who represented the ideal image of the pioneer settlers were pushed aside by ‘big agriculture’, ranching and mining, often struggling for economic survival and running into debt. Their desperate need for credit to buy seed, fertilisers and equipment was the driving force behind the many organisations that sprang up in the late 1880s to represent independent farmers in both the West and the South

The Granger movement was first formed in 1867 as a cooperative movement to help farmers with loans, advice, and solidarity. The ‘Grange’ was especially hostile to the railroad companies. Support for the Grange peaked around 1880 and then fell back. Support shifted to the alliance movement that began in Texas in the 1870s and spread across the Southern and Western states. The alliance movement took a more openly political approach than the Granger movement and put up candidates in elections. By 1890, farmers’ grievances were a significant political force, attacking big business and its cartels, and demanding low tariffs and currency reform

Question 21

The position of African-Americans - negative:

Answer 21

The era of Reconstruction resulted in discrimination against African-Americans as Southern segregationists attempted to regain their old dominance. The Compromise between President Hayes and the Democrats in 1877 enabled a Democrat stranglehold on the ‘Solid South’. With the removal of all federal troops from the South, the laws passed to protect African-American rights were no longer enforced. Many black people were disfranchised, and many people faced restrictions on their legal rights

Freedmen faced terrible difficulties economically in finding worthwhile employment: for many it was necessary to live and work as a sharecropper, and they were not much better off than before emancipation. There was anger that little or nothing was done to provide freedmen with their own land. Politically, they found barriers placed in the way of their right to vote, or to gain equality under the law. Lynchings were a common occurrence, along with widespread incidents of low-level intimidation. There were also uncomfortable social tensions between ‘blacks’, those who had been slaves until 1865, and ‘browns’, better-off people who had gained their free status earlier

Question 22

The position of African-Americans - positive:

Answer 22

But there were also significant advances for many African-Americans. Many demonstrated their new independence by moving away from their previous home districts. They chose new surnames and insisted on being called ‘mister’ or ‘miss’. They exercised their right to marry, to set up new churches, and to open small businesses serving the needs of African-American customers. There was a strong commitment to black education, encouraged by the Freedmen’s Bureau and by some state governments. Wealthy Northern philanthropists also set up charities and donated money to found schools and universities. Thousands of new public schools were opened. Between 1866 and 1868, 3 universities specifically for African-American students were opened: Fisk University, Howard University and the Hampton Institute. But educational progress was patchy. Racially-mixed schools were discouraged. It is estimated that more than half of African-Americans in the South were illiterate in 1890

It was an educationalist, trained at the Hampton Institute, who became the most prestigious and influential spokesman for African-Americans. Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama from its founding in 1881 to his death in 1915, was an advocate of moderation and compromise. Washington built up the ‘Tuskegee machine’, controlling many organisations and black newspapers, and he gained a high reputation among Northern liberals. In his later career, Washington was attacked by more radical black voices for being too accommodating to white supremacy, but in the years before 1890 he was a powerful influence

Most African-Americans remained rural people, still dependent on the cotton fields of the South, but after 1877 many began to leave. From this time also, the drift from the land to the towns and cities gathered pace as urbanisation began to take effect, and many African-Americans were tempted to look northwards

Question 23

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915):

Answer 23

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia. At the age of 9 he witnessed the confirmation of the Emancipation Proclamation of the end of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. He became the first leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a school established in 1881 to train African-American teachers. In 1891 Washington founded the West Virginia State University, part of his lifelong commitment to black education. He gained a great reputation as a black leader, though in later life radicals criticised him for being too moderate

Question 24

The Black Exodus:

Answer 24

In 1879 there was an ‘exodus’ of thousands of black people from the Southern states to Kansas. There were many reports of destitute African-Americans travelling via the Mississippi River to St Louis and from there to Kansas. There was a Senate investigation into the exodus in 1880

Question 25

Summary:

Answer 25

There was massive social and demographic change in America between 1865 and 1890: a rapid rise in the population and dramatic shifts in where Americans lived and in their changing roles in the economy. These shifts often intensified social tensions and ethnic divisions, bringing hardship and alienation to many industrial workers, to farmers in the South and West, and to the new urban poor. But social change was also dynamic and productive, with prosperity and rising living standards for many Americans. Belief in the United States as the Land of Opportunity with an ever-brighter future was deeply ingrained in the national consciousness