Key Eras in American History: Civil War to World War II

Unit 7: Civil War and Reconstruction

• Causes: Sectional tension over slavery; Popular Sovereignty (local voting on slavery) led to "Bleeding Kansas."
• John Brown: Radical abolitionist; the 1859 Harpers Ferry raid signaled imminent war.
• Abraham Lincoln: Won the 1860 election on a "Free Soil" platform, triggering Southern secession.
• The War: Shifted from "preserving the Union" to "abolition" after the Emancipation Proclamation (1863).
• Turning Point: Gettysburg (1863); Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address defined the "new birth of freedom."
• Reconstruction Amendments: 13th (ends slavery), 14th (citizenship/equal protection), and 15th (Black male suffrage).
• Conflict: President Johnson (lenient) vs. Radical Republicans (strict/Military Reconstruction).

Unit 8: Jim Crow, Gilded Age, and Immigration

• Jim Crow: Reconstruction ended (1877); Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legalized "separate but equal." Disenfranchisement occurred via literacy tests.
• Gilded Age: Rapid industrialization (railroads, steel, oil). Robber Barons (Carnegie, Rockefeller) created monopolies and extreme inequality.
• Ideology: Social Darwinism justified poverty. Muckrakers (Riis, Hine) exposed slums and child labor.
• Immigration: Rise of "New Immigrants" (Southern/Eastern Europe) met with Nativism. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was the first ethnic ban.

Unit 9: The Frontier and Imperialism

• Frontier: The Homestead Act encouraged settlement. The Dawes Act forced Native assimilation; Wounded Knee (1890) ended armed resistance.
• Overseas: Annexed Hawaii; won the Spanish-American War (1898), gaining Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
• Theodore Roosevelt (TR): Built the Panama Canal; the Roosevelt Corollary claimed the U.S. as an "International Police Power."

Unit 10: Progressivism and WWI

• Progressivism: Government reform of Gilded Age ills (e.g., Pure Food & Drug Act).
• Eugene Debs: Led a Socialist critique of capitalism.
• WWI: U.S. entered (1917) due to submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram. The Sedition Act limited free speech at home.
• Suffrage: The 19th Amendment (1920) granted women the vote after WWI service.

Unit 11-12: 1920s, Depression, and New Deal

• 1920s: Boom economy vs. Prohibition (18th Amendment) and the Red Scare. The Harlem Renaissance celebrated Black culture.
• Great Depression: Caused by overproduction and the 1929 crash. The Dust Bowl caused mass migration.
• New Deal (FDR): The "Three Rs": Relief (jobs), Recovery (economy), and Reform (Social Security, FDIC).

Unit 13: World War II

• Entry: Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941) ended isolationism.
• Homefront: Rosie the Riveter (women in industry); Executive Order 9066 (Japanese incarceration).
• End: Atomic Bombs on Japan (1945). The U.S. became a global superpower, starting the Cold War and forming the United Nations.