Patrick N. Allit
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
When the Soviet Union went through a peaceful transition to democracy, the United States was left as the world's one great superpower, able to preside over the creation of numerous new nations with more or less democratic and America-inspired political systems. In the 1990s, the absence of Communist repression permitted old ethnic and religious animosities in Eastern Europe to resurface.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The first transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. Completion cut travel time from the Mississippi to the West Coast from three months to about one week. The line was joined by other transcontinentals; a national network facilitated settlement in the plains and mountain states that had been too remote.
3) The History of the United States, 2nd Edition: Episode 13,The American Revolution - Washington's War
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The money, credit, weapons, and French naval and military resources forced the British to shift the focus of their war. British field forces fell under a combined land-and-sea campaign conducted by Washington and the French at Yorktown, where the British surrendered. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 reluctantly conceded American independence.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Late 19th-century Europe was full of stories about America, and bad conditions for farmers prompted many of them to emigrate. Parents found that, with hard work, they, or their children, could climb to American prosperity and respectability. Fears of "race suicide" in the 1920s gave rise to an immigration restriction policy.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The Spanish tapped sources of wealth in the Americas, displaying the most wanton cruelty in obtaining it. By 1600, they had evolved from an extraction society to a settler society. The French attempted extraction incursions and to settle in North America but did not succeed as the Spanish had in the South.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Declining profitability before 1800 suggested that slavery would gradually die out, but the success of cotton agriculture and the labor needed to sustain it resurrected slavery. Northern abolitionists gathered force in the 1830s; southern demands for protection and extradition of runaways led to mob violence and aggressive antislavery organizing in the North.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
America is a far more religious society than other Western industrial nations - another example of its exceptionalism. It also tolerated an exotic array of sects and cults, from hippies to the followers of Jim Jones who committed mass suicide in 1978. Religious groups also played a role in the moral-political debates over civil rights, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, and nuclear weapons.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The stresses of Colonial life produced unusual social eruptions that were aimed at regaining some sense of control. The Great Awakening, a revival of radical Protestant religion across New England, helped people recover a sense of spiritual significance and moral direction; it also touched off violent religious controversy.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Thomas Jefferson proved incapable of creating a practical set of alternatives to Hamilton's hard-headed fiscal policies, particularly in defense and in foreign trade. He was also surprised by the activism of the federal judiciary, which, under Chief Justice John Marshall, began to operate as a serious restraint on the scope of Jefferson's actions.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Jackson's Democrats thought of freedom as the privilege to be wealthy, and that liberty was a negative, not positive, idea. Blaming Martin van Buren for the depression, voters elected William Henry Harrison as the first Whig president. But Harrison died a month after inauguration; his vice president, John Tyler, was an old-line Democrat who promptly reinstalled the Jackson agenda.
12) The History of the United States, 2nd Edition: Episode 74,The New Frontier and the Great Society
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
President John F. Kennedy's escalation of the Cold War was offset by a new concern for legislating on behalf of the poor and minorities. After Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, pursued antipoverty and antidiscrimination legislation and further expanded the federal government.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
By the 1820s, immigrants flowed through America's seaports from Europe; and with the clearance of Indian resistance, the Northwest Territory was opened by massive government land sales. Many emigrants, however, chose to stay in the cities they first entered, and their numbers soon swelled the size of the American urban population.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
This episode surveys manifestations of sectional animosity, especially regarding slavery, and gives attention to the brief history of the American, or Know-Nothing, Party. It also stresses the idea that, whatever the real divisions between them, Northerners and Southerners increasingly proved willing to believe the worst about the other.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Thousands of newspapers in 20th-century America, with radio stations, television, and the world's strongest movie industry, informed citizens well about their surroundings and about political and social questions. Media power transformed the nature of politics, lobbying, and even the military, as the armed forces discovered to its detriment in Vietnam.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Debates in the North over how best to bring the Confederate states back into the Union began while the war still raged. This episode examines the wartime context and continues through Johnson's early presidency. By the end of 1866, the stage was set for a final showdown between the president and Congress in the fight over Reconstruction in the South.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Reconstruction improved many aspects of black Southerners' lives, at least for a number of years, and left deep scars on a white South that labored diligently to project an image of Northern oppression. The episode closes with an assessment of whether Reconstruction should be judged a success or a moment of lost opportunity for African Americans in the United States.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The transition of settlements to stable commercial success would not have been possible without a source of cheap labor. America's immensity of land and lack of labor to develop it required forced migration of laborers: convicts, indentured servants, beggars. But a less expensive and more permanent source of labor was the 11 million Africans who were torn from their homes to be slaves.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
With renewed war in Europe on the horizon, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana province for $15 million. Jefferson asked Congress to finance a secret scouting party under Lewis and Clark. Vice President Aaron Burr, who attempted to set up his own independent republic, was thwarted and saved from a treason indictment only by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The immense vitality and diversity of American life have been sustained by several recurrent themes. Compared to its high ideals, America always fell short. Compared to the other nations of the world, however, America was far more impressive for its successes than for its failings.
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