US History II

This unit will focus on war and the military from 1898 to 1920, which will include American imperialism, US involvement in Latin America, and World War I. It is a short unit and will move quickly through the material. The online quiz will cover other terms and concepts listed below, drawn from Chapters 4-6. Use the 1900-1932 tab above to find primary sources for your SkillBuilder #3.

Here’s an overview of the unit (also found on the schedule, see the link in the left sidebar).

Mon 9/24 – The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Reading: Ch 3.4 “Imperialism at Home and Abroad”

Wed 9/26 – Foreign Policy and the Flag. Reading: Ch 4.1.5 “Latin America and Asia”

Fri 9/28 – Workshop Day on the Insular Cases, Hawaii and the start of WW1. SkillBuilder #3 is due . BRING YOUR LAPTOPS TO CLASS. Reading: Ch 5.1 “Wilson Administration and the Coming War”

Mon 10/1 – World War I. Reading: Ch 5.2 “The Great War and America” + 5.3 “Armistice and Aftermath.”

Wed 10/3 – Constitutions Day. Reading: Amar, “How Women Won the Vote” (PDF). The online quiz will open up after class on this day.

Just for fun –

Fri 10/5 – In-class Exam #2

List of terms and concepts for the online quiz:
Progressivism – who were Progressives? What were their goals? What did the movement achieve?
Theodore Roosevelt – his political philosophies, accomplishments, and complexities
Muckrakers – who they were, what they wrote about, strategies and goals
Niagara Movement – what was it, who was involved?
Lawrence Textile Strike (this is the 100th anniversary), also called the “Bread and Roses” strike, why?
IWW or the “Wobblies”
Constitutional Amendments #16, 17, 18 and 19
Fordism and the American Plan
The Second Klan
National Origins Act of 1924
Harlem Renaissance
Garveyism

In class today, we’ll work in groups of three on some primary and secondary sources to help us understand gender in Victorian America. Some of you will have papers, some will have reproductions of mail-order catalogs, some will have photographs, and some of you will work online using laptops.

Links for today:

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

Victorian Fashion

“There Are No Renters Here: Homesteading a Sod House”
 

I have posted the new syllabus schedule, based on the results of Friday’s voting, in the sidebar links. You can also download it here (2-page PDF). The “lens” for the first unit is gender, so as we look at the period from 1875 to 1900 we will be interested in how men & women were defined and the contexts in which they experienced being male or female. Gender mattered deeply in work, home, citizenship, and opportunity during this period.

Here’s a brief overview of the unit:

Mon 9/10 – Finish talking about Reconstruction – reading is to review Ch 1-3 to get an overview of the time period’s major events

Wed 9/12 – Self-Made Men & Women; Homesteaders; Westerners and Immigrants. Reading: Ch 2.2 Winning & Losing the West AND 2.3 Growth of Industrial America and the New South. BRING LAPTOPS/DEVICES TO CLASS!

Fri 9/14 – Workshop Day on Victorian Masculinity and Femininity. Reading: Davidson, “City Life and City Culture” (PDF – Click here to download). BRING LAPTOPS TO CLASS.

Mon 9/17 – Gilded Age Gender. Reading: Ch 2.4 Challenging the Gilded Age

Wed 9/19 – American “Nadir.” Reading: Ch 3.3 Immigration, Ethnicity and the “Nadir of Race Relations.” The online portion of the exam will open on this day (see below for more information).

Fri 9/21 – The written portion of the exam will be in class. The in-class exam will cover what we’ve talked about in class during this unit, including the assigned portions of the textbook and any other assigned readings. The online portion will cover the following basic concepts and events from the rest of Chapters 1-3:

• Reconstruction Amendments
• Sharecropping
• The New South
• Exodusters
• Compromise of 1877
• political machines/ Tammany Hall
• Dawes Act
• Farmers’ Alliances
• Populism/ Omaha Platform
• Knights of Labor v. American Federation of Labor
• Panic of 1893
• Pullman Strike
• Wounded Knee
• Ellis Island
• Election of 1896

Today we voted to decide which “lens” we will use in each unit of the course this term. Our textbook (like most textbooks) takes a mainly political “lens,” so we will explore other aspects of American history in our workshops and class sessions to help supplement that perspective.

Update: On Monday 9/10 you’ll receive an updated and more detailed syllabus schedule based on these voting results. On the course Blackboard, I have added a short (ungraded) “Practice Quiz” so you can try out the online testing environment – it will be available until Tuesday the 11th under “Quizzes”. I have also added a new tab to this website (above) called “Slides” which will have a weekly “digest” of the PowerPoint slides. Read & study chapters 1-3 which are the background reading for the unit on 1875-1900.

Also today, we began a conversation about a very important period in American history: Reconstruction. There is no one simple definition of the word. The term has multiple meanings and historians disagree about the impact and legacy of the post-Civil War era. One view is that Reconstruction happened from the top down – that’s the interpretation put forward by this brief History Channel overview –

A different interpretation is that Reconstruction was part of a long history of African-American efforts to secure and define freedom for themselves (which is alluded to at the end of that clip). Different groups had very different goals for how the country should mend after the Civil War, and their goals were often at cross-purposes.

Find your own answers to these questions: Was Reconstruction a “failure” or a “success”, or some combination of the two? Who benefited and who lost? By 1877, in what ways had the U.S. been “reconstructed”?

1) Read the syllabus

2) Decide how you will access the AHUS textbook this semester

3) Read AHUS Table of Contents and Ch 1. Understand the multiple meanings for the word “RECONSTRUCTION”

4) Write your first SkillBuilder. The first assignment is a little simpler than the subsequent ones will be. Choose ONE primary source from one of the following sites, and DESCRIBE it in a short 2-page paper (exactly 2 pages – no more, no less). EXPLAIN how it is a useful piece of evidence about the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877). CITE the source using your best approximation of a correct Chicago Style footnote (see your copy of Hacker, A Writer’s Reference or use the sidebar link to Hacker’s guide to citing historical sources). TITLE your paper with something clever or relevant (not “SkillBuilder #1”). SUBMIT it as a printed paper on Friday or EMAIL it to me BEFORE CLASS BEGINS.

• Library of Congress Primary Documents, Civil War and Reconstruction 1860-1877 *Choose a document from 1865 or after*
• Freedmen & Southern Society Project *Scroll to the bottom of the page for post-1865 documents*
• African American Odyssey, Reconstruction and its Aftermath

5) Prepare to vote on the unit lenses & bring your ballot to class with each lens USED ONLY ONCE. If you need a new ballot, download the PDF here.