From 3037b638de3559d51c8cda54b607d3a6b99e42d7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Holden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2020 10:34:42 -0400
Subject: watched a couple of Smith lectures
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smith/04_politics_populism | 153 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
smith/05_american_empire | 141 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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+The Gilded Age: Politics and Populism
+
+High levels of corruption during the gilded age.
+
+Woodrow Wilson said that modern politcis had no leaders
+Roosevelt, critic of Wilson says that "when role called in senate,
+senators don't know whether to say present or not guilty."
+Barons/special interests bought favors, priveleges, lobbying.
+Common desires to repair the system.
+Fed. gov't very small at time (mostly postal), so politics was primarily
+local/regional. 20th century saw its growth.
+Party loyalty (both for issues and for networking) was very important.
+
+Rings
+- Organizational groups that controlled cities
+- Bosses (like William Tweed) controlled
+- Used "machines" to support and manage specific action in gov't
+ - Gave out contracts in a favour system
+ - Patronage ("Spoils") System for supporters
+ - Feudal hierarchy. Senator -> Clerk/post -> support
+ - Managed within schemes of party loyalty
+ - Brought structure, stability
+ - Often plundering government
+ - Expected *appointed* officials to be loyal to bosses
+ - Acted as judge system
+- Civil Service Reformers attacked this system (preferring merit)
+
+Very high voter turnout with uncontroversial platforms
+- Dems for small gov, white supremacy
+ - Northern Irish-Catholic Germans
+ - White supremacist southerners
+ - Disagreed with "party of morality"
+ - Prohibition to hurt specific group
+- Reps against tarriffs but okay with it if it benefits const.
+ - Popular in Protestant {NE,midwest}
+ - Relied on votes by African-Americans
+ - Veterans
+- Third party (greenback, populist, prohibition)
+ - Specific issues
+- NAWSA gained women voting rights in 1890s four states.
+
+Grover Cleveland
+- Narrow view of presidency (laissez-faire, administrative)
+- Vetoed 2/3 of all bills
+- Highly conservative, "Grover the Good"
+The Dawes Act
+- To break up and assimilate American Indians
+- Distributed reservation land as plots among families
+- Gave remaining land to white settlers
+- Old policy: confine Amerindians to reservations and teach individual
+ property
+- Made Amerindians subject to federal law as individual
+- Amerindians had to "prove" they could farm competently over 25 years
+ - After, they could try to obtain citizenship if success
+ - If fail, they have to pay taxes
+ - Land could not yield sustainable crop
+
+Major Issues?
+- Civil Service Reform
+ Conservative (anti-women's suffrage)
+ James Garfield murdered by Republican office-seeker
+ Charles Guitea expected return for working to elect him
+ Stalks the president because he believes he's destined for
+ greatness.
+ "Mordered by the Spoils System"
+ Pres Chester Arthur keeps promises to avoid spoils politics
+ Pendleton Act (1883)
+ Created Civil Service Commission.
+ Prohibited federal employees from solicit or recv political
+ contrtibutions from federal workers.
+ Prohibited political firings
+ Gov't was growing, so sorely needed.
+- Tariffs
+ - McKinley (ROhio) Tariff appeased businesses and competitors
+ - Businesses raised prices
+ - Republicans losing support from this
+!!Populist party (farmworkers, wage laborers)
+- Currency
+ - Currency disappearing, so it deflates
+ Principles:
+ - Amount of money in circulation determines its value
+ - Unbacked (by gold or silver) currency loses value rapidly
+ - Monetary policy hurt farmers because crop value decreased
+ - "Deflationary spiral" made it hard to repay debts -> continued
+ deflation
+ - In 1873, US went bimetallic standard -> gold standard
+ - Eliminated silver dollar
+ - Farmers, miners supported return to 16:1 bimetallic standard
+ - Inflation to help pay debt, "unlimited coinage"
+ - Congress authorized gov to buy silver in 1890
+ Sherman Silver Purchasing Act
+ Increased nation's money supply, inflating economy
+
+Panic of 1893
+- Soon after inauguration for Grover Cleveland's second term
+- Farmers worried about droughts, crop prices, foreclosures, railroad
+ price discrimination
+- Stock market crash and successive bank run in May
+- Gets worse by 1894
+ - Businesses, banks shuttering
+ - Lasts until 1898
+ - Cleveland restricts credit
+- Jacob Coxey's Army
+ - Wants $5M to build more railroads and employ men
+ - Civil War vet, farmer, business-owner
+ - Marched on Congress for bimetallic standard to reverse
+ deflationary spiral
+ - Coxey arrested and sent to jail for 20 days
+
+Pullman Strike
+- Protesting wage cuts and layoffs from pullman railcar workers
+ - Pay rent to company; wages reduced without reduction in rent
+- 10 days after coxey's army
+- Cleveland sends in armed forces on basis of interference with mail
+ delivery
+- Chicago
+- Court issued injunction against union
+ - Violent confrontation between illegal union and police
+ - 26 men died
+ - Army occupied railroad yards to "restore order"
+
+Populism
+- Want better farm profits, less debt to farmers
+- For bimetallic standard (unlimited coinage), regulation of
+ railroads/utilities (rail price discrimination)
+- Also direct election of senators
+- Political Platform
+- James Weaver (populist nominee) loses with 1M votes in 1892
+- 1896 Election: "Battle of the Standards"
+ - Democrat division
+ - Bourbon democrats: Democrat establishment support gold
+ - Back Grover Cleveland
+ - Destroyed by economy, Cleveland loses
+ - Silver democrats: farmers, miners favouring bimetallic
+ - Silverites
+ - Silver signified support of rural, downtrodden, shift away from NE
+ - McKinley (R) supports big biz.
+ - Rallies around property owners and conservative on change
+ - Gives speech from portch
+ - Silverites (dems+pop) nominate Williamns Jennings Bryan (D-NE)
+ - Cross of Gold speech: ``you shall not crucify mankind upon
+ a cross of gold'' (or press upon the working man crown of
+ thorns)
+ - Appeals to populist platform
+ - Repubs call him "leader of malcontents"
+ - Took campaign directly to voters (visit 18K mile, 27 state)
+ becuase Eastern newspapers wouldn't support him
+ - "Merchandising" campaign
+ - Cleanse nation of corruption and inequality, pro-rural,
+ pro-religious
+ - Despite legendary campaign, 4% lead in favor of McKinley
+ because Bryan failed to reach urban-industrial NErs
+ - Followed by 36 years of Republican dom except Woodrow
diff --git a/smith/05_american_empire b/smith/05_american_empire
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+Wanted to avoid Europe.
+
+Manifest Destiny
+- US Blessed by god and destined to expand westward
+- Justified imperialism
+ - Spread christianity, capitalist/dem ideals, greed
+ - Create colonies without turning into states
+
+Americans embraced expansionism
+- 1898: America, in one-sided war with Spain becomes ruler of colonies
+
+"Winning of the West" by Teddy Roosevelt
+ America needs to rule the "backwards peoples of the world"
+ Like Amerindians, new subjects
+
+What factors motivated America's new imperialism during the late
+nineteenth century?
+
+Pre-age of empires
+Washington's outgoing address to public:
+ - Avoid factionalism and war (entanglement with European powers)
+ - Isolationism
+[James] Munroe Doctrine:
+ - Non-interference in East and control of West
+ - View interference with US as hostile
+
+1867-1899:
+Imperialism starts
+ - Expanding a nation's power through colonialism, annexation
+James G Blaine (of Garfield cabinet) + other "foreign policy elites"
+ - Believed in aggressive expansion of the US to compete w/ GB, FR
+ - Economic argument: farmers, manufacturers need new markets
+ - Want China as mkt
+ - Believed that expansion would solve domestic problems.
+Frederick Jackson Turner authored a book
+ "The Frontier" builds American character (darwinism, self, manhood)
+ - Battle between native-born white americans and "Indian savages"
+ - The literal frontier is "closed," so develop a "new frontier"
+Alfred Thayer Mahan, military strategist
+ - "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History"
+ - What makes a nation great?
+ Wealth through foreign trade and
+ Protection of distant ports with a powerful navy
+ - Build an isthmus canal protected by US navy
+ - Stepping stones and refueling stations in Pacific (Hawaii, Guam,
+ Wake Island, Philippines)
+Racial/Civilization argument
+ - Spread Christianity, civilization(materialism,property), democracy
+ - Josiath Strong: expansionist minister
+ - "Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis" (1885)
+ - US is in a race with other nations to conquer the world
+Rudyard Kipling
+ - Poem: "The White Man's Burden" (1899)
+ - White Anglo-sax (am,gb) need to govern dark-skinned people
+ ("inferior races") by imposing Christian, American principles
+ - Their duty to establish success and stability of their nations
+
+What were the causes of the Spanish-American War (1898)?
+
+Cuba is a Spanish colony.
+ But it trades more with US than with Spain.
+ US moguls who set up mining, sugar concerned about sec of investment
+Jose Marti, journalist and poet who started revolution
+ Scorched earth policy (burning trains, exploding bridges)
+ Burned American plantations to provoke American involvement
+ Spanish Gen. Valeriano Weyler moves villages of people to other
+ parts of country (concentration camps)
+ During the revolution, Americans worried they wouldn't get the
+ chance to colonise/control Amer. interests
+ McKinley considered buying Cuba and ending conflict
+
+"Penny Press" and Yellow Journalism
+- William Randolph Hearst: NY Journal
+- Joseph Pulitzer: NY World
+- Competing for readership with sensational headlines about possibly
+ invented Spanish atrocities
+ Hearst: newspapers have the duty to shape public opinion, legis.
+ "Have the power to declare war"
+- Yellow Journalism shapes public opinion with false stories
+ - Portray Cubans as light-skinned civilized freedom lovers and
+ Spaniards as dark-skinned brutes
+
+Enrique DuPuy De Lome: Spanish ambassador to US
+ - Called McKinley "weak and bitter for the admiration of the crowd"
+ - USS Maine exploded, killing 260/354. Years later ruled an
+ accident, but warmongerers (like T. Roosevelt, navyman) declared
+ this an act of war
+ - Public liked Spain less and less
+ - "Remember The Maine, and to hell with Spain!"
+ - At first, Spain agreed to every American demand
+ - Apr 20: Congress demanded withdrawal of Spain, and US begins to
+ blockade Cuban ports.
+ - Before war is declared, navy declares victory over Philippines
+ - Dewey, with American navy, easily beats outdated Cuban forces
+ - German and Brit. forces cruised around, waiting to takeover if
+ the US doesn't (it does months later, with backup)
+Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
+ - Roosevelt is pro-imperialism, believing it to make a nation
+ powerful
+ - Rough Riders cavalry become weary walkers
+ - Roosevelt wanted to defeat Spain
+ - Believed that fighting in war was the ultimate test of manhood
+
+What were the consequences of the Spanish-American war for the United
+States?
+
+- Spain surrenders after 4 months
+Dec 10, 1898: US and Spain sign Treaty of Paris
+- Cuba -> independent
+- US annexes PR and Guam as territories
+- US annexes Manila, expecting to take over in US
+- Reinforces Manifest Destiny
+- Europe respects America as an international power
+
+Business and missionaries support annexation to bring commerce and
+Christianity to "the little brown brother" (and penetrate China)
+
+Emilio Aguinaldo -- Filipino General and Independence Leader
+- It came to McKinley that he wanted to annex after many days of
+ decisionmaking: don't give power to Spain/Fr/Germany and don't free
+ because they "cannot self-govern"
+- Locals support independence movements
+ - 1899: Filipinos declare independence
+ - 1899-1902 Filipino-American War
+ - Aguinaldo is president
+ - US fires on "Insurrectos"
+ - Jun 2, Filipino Insurrectos declare war
+ - 4x as many troops, $600M, >200K Filipinos (many civilians), >4K am
+ - 1902: Filipinos were unorganized territory (ineligible for state)
+
+China
+- Japan wins first Sino-Japanese were in 1844-45 and Eur. nations
+ establish spheres of influence
+- Open Door Notes by Sec. of St. John Hay
+ - Nations shouldn't take control of China because market should be
+ available to the world
+ - GB accepts policy, but only GB.
+ - Hay announces all accept policy, but they just didn't disagree
+- Boxers Rebellion (1900) rejects foreign power and destroys foreign
+ embassies
+ - Organization to recover ambassadors
--
cgit