US History II

Reminder: No class on Monday, Feb 18th (President’s Day)

Unit Overview: This week we begin unit #2, on the US from 1890-1940. Our main chapters will be 22 and 23, with a short 2-day overview of Chapter 21. This unit’s online quiz will cover Chapter 20 and will be open March 8-15. Also during this unit, you will be writing a longer (5-page) essay based on two primary sources of your choosing (see the tab above for guidelines). A draft of the paper is due on March 1 and the final version due on March 8. The unit exam will be on Friday, March 15.

Wed 2/20 Imperialism and Foreign Policy – Reading ACH Ch 21 pp. 629-641 (slides posted below)

Fri 2/22 World War I – Reading ACH Ch 21 pp. 641-658. SkillBuilder #4 due by the time class starts – pick a SkillBuilder document from Chapter 20 or 21. Also – by this date, choose the two documents you plan to write about for the Primary Source Project.

Questions to think about as you read this week:
How and why did the US become an “emerging world power” at the start of the 20th century?
What were the international and domestic consequences of American military, cultural and economic expansion?
Who supported and who opposed American imperialism?
How did the nation move from neutrality to participation in World War I?
What kinds of sources and documents do we have to help us understand this era?

Wednesday’s slides were rather text-heavy, so I’m posting for easier notetaking – click fullscreen icon to enlarge

Due to ongoing snow removal, there is no class today and campus is closed. Materials are posted below from last Friday’s “online class” including this downloadable study guide for the in-class exam on Friday 2/15.

On Wednesday 2/13 we will have a workshop during class based on Chapter 18. Please read the Henretta ACH chapter 18 ahead of time, and bring the Fernlund reader Documents for America’s History with you to class on Wednesday.

Thanks, stay safe! See you Wednesday.

Recommended viewing this week, related to Chapter 18 –

Watch Women of PROHIBITION: Frances Willard & Mary Hanchett Hunt on PBS. See more from Prohibition.

Since when did we begin naming snowstorms? Anyway. We don’t have class today; this is the “online version” instead. Stay safe and warm today!

Some quick reminders and news:

• Please remember that the online quiz is open until 9:00 am Friday 2/8.
• Your SkillBuilder is due Friday morning on the regular schedule, by the start of your classtime. Send it as an email attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf) with your LAST NAME as the start of the filename. Example: Hangen.Skillbuilder3
• Next Friday will be in-class exam #1 – click here to download the study guide. You may bring with you to the exam ONE 3×5 index card with anything you want on it.
• The reading for Monday is ACH Chapter 18 (the entire chapter – read for main ideas, not for the little details)
• Got questions? Leave a comment, or email me. See you Monday!

Today’s reading was ACH Ch 17, p. 528-537 about labor organizing. Begin by thinking about some of the wretched conditions that late 19th century workers experienced (click on any of the pictures for more details).

Child Labor

Dangerous, Dirty Workplaces

No Compensation for Workplace Injury

Unregulated Waste Disposal

Poor Quality Housing

(All of these photographs were taken by Lewis Hine, in his work documenting American workers for the National Child Labor Committee. Click here to see more of Hine’s work)

Between 1870 and 1900, there were a number of movements and organizations that sought to unite the “producing classes” – which included both wage laborers and farmers, since both groups saw themselves “at the mercy of large corporations” (Henretta 529). Such movements include:

• Grange (founded 1867) – cooperative rural aid society that provided meeting halls, banks, insurance, grain storage, and farm equipment. Supported paper currency (Greenbacks) and allied with labor in some parts of the country to form the Greenback-Labor political party.
• Knights of Labor, which started as a fraternal society for garment workers and expanded to be a large and politically active organization that included both men and women, skilled and unskilled, and black and white. Their motto was “An Injury to One Is the Concern of All.” Their leader was Terence Powderly and they were at the height of their influence in 1886 (due in part to the tireless work of Leonora Barry) when the Haymarket Riot decimated their public image and their membership numbers plummeted. We do have the KL to thank for Labor Day, though.
• Farmers’ Alliances, which took up many of the same issues that Grange and Greenbackers had and tried to organize a system of cooperative exchanges for crops and farm products, and helped pass the Hatch Act and the legislation that formed the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
• The American Federation of Labor, led for many years by Samuel Gompers of the Cigar-Makers Union, which took a very different strategy and focused more narrowly on negotiating wages, benefits and working conditions directly with employers.

Question for reflection: Who–or what kinds of workers–were included within and who might have been left out of these labor organizations. Who benefited, and who didn’t, and why?

This week, we’ll be reading Chapter 17 and exploring the history of business, industrialization, labor unions, and immigration. Those are big forces, so we will try to understand them not only as broad collective movements and trends, but also at the level of the individual, the family, and the community. Also, don’t forget to take the online quiz (on Ch 19) by 9:00 am Friday 2/8!

Mon 2/4 – Big Business Getting Bigger. We will have our first Monday Daily Question (MDQ) right at the start of class. Come having read ACH Ch 17 p. 506 – 521 (the syllabus says 522 but it ends on 521). The reading is once again posted on Blackboard in case there’s still someone without a 5th edition. Click here for a link to Harvard’s trade card exhibit I mentioned in class, and here are Monday’s slides (click the fullscreen icon to enlarge):

Wed 2/6 – Immigrants, East and West. Reading = ACH Ch 17 p. 533 – 528. Who was coming to the US as an immigrant in the late 19th century? What were their prospects as new Americans? Who could, and who couldn’t, become a US citizen? Where did new arrivals live and find work?

Links we’ll use in class on Wednesday:
The Great American Melting Pot
Photos of New York’s immigrant neighborhoods from “How the Other Half Lives” (Jacob Riis/ UVA Xroads)
Immigration Explorer Map (New York Times)
The Chinese in California 1850-1925 (Library of Congress)
Ellis Island Museum and Foundation

Fri 2/8 – Labor Gets Organized. Reading = ACH Ch 17 p. 528 – 537. SkillBuilder #3 is due by the start of class. Online Quiz #1 will close at 9:00 am. Update: if the weather is bad on Friday and school is cancelled, no worries – just email your paper, and make sure you’ve taken the online quiz. I will send out or post the slides & notes from that day if we don’t have class.

Friday’s topic is the dispossession of American native peoples and their fierce resistance to these policies, especially Plains Indians in the late 19th century.

Reading: CH 16 pp. 494-505 (once again posted on Blackboard as a PDF, hopefully for the last time – everyone should have a 5th edition by this weekend; if not, please let me know via email).

Due: SkillBuilder #2. If you are still without the reader, check here for alternative documents. Consult the syllabus or the SkillBuilders tab (above) for guidelines, and here’s the advice handout in case you need it again. If you need help with Chicago Style footnotes, use the links in the left sidebar.

Online quiz: on Friday morning, an online open-book 12-point quiz will open up in “Quizzes” on Blackboard. You will have ONE WEEK to take the quiz up to 3 times, with 30 minutes per attempt. The questions and/or the possible answers may be randomized for each new attempt. The quiz questions all come from Chapter 19, which is the chapter in this unit we are *not* reading for class. The quiz will be open from Friday Feb 1st at 9:00 am to Friday Feb 8 at 9:00 am. Quiz grades are relatively low-stakes, but are required- I do not drop any of the quizzes.

(Image: Chaiwa – Tewa woman, photographed by Edward Curtis, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Use these links to navigate to the resource you picked up on the assignment sheet and use today’s class time to study the resource online. If you chose a book, there’s a stack in the front of the room you can select from. Remember to leave about 5-10 minutes at the end to compose a comment to this post sharing your findings and insights from this workshop with the rest of the class. Your submitted comment is my record of your attendance and participation in today’s workshop.

(These are in alphabetical order)

Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Chinese in California, 1850-1925 (Library of Congress American Memory)
Chronicling America Historical Newspapers
Colorado Historical Newspapers Collection
Custer Battlefield Museum
Daniel Freeman’s Homestead Application, 1862
Denver Public Library photographs (Library of Congress American Memory)
Digital Archives of Sioux County Nebraska
Edward Curtis’s North American Indian (Library of Congress American Memory)
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
Little Bighorn National Monument
“Mythbusters” from students in HI 207 American West Course, Fall 2009
“No Renters Here” – Homesteading a Sod House
Plains Indian Ledger Art
Rawhide
Stagecoach (directed by John Ford, 1939)
Texas Border Photographs (Library of Congress American Memory)
Texas Ranch House
Texas State Historical Association – Handbook of Texas Online
Utah and Western Migration (Library of Congress American Memory)
Worcester State Library – Articles and Databases
Wyoming Newspaper Project

This week we’re reading and working with the material in Chapter 16 of both the textbook and the reader.

General News: The new correct books are now in stock at the bookstore! To exchange, you’ll need to bring BOTH parts of the bundle you bought there, along with your receipt, and you can get the new set (same reader + 5th edition of the textbook) for a mere $4.51 more. You can’t just bring the textbook and swap it out for the new one, you need to return the entire bundle and get a new bundle in its place.

Also: in class I handed out the updated syllabus page 6, with all the due dates, readings, and topics for the whole semester, based on your votes. I’ve linked to it in the sidebar in case you need another copy at some point during the term. I also handed out a page of advice about the SkillBuilder assignments.

Monday 1/28 – Reading = ACH Ch 16 p. 475 – 484

Wednesday 1/30 – Reading ACH Ch 16 p. 484 – 494. Workshop Day on the “Wild West” – please bring your laptops to class.

Friday 2/1 – SkillBuilder #2 due – if you don’t yet have the reader, please use one of these alternative documents. Reading = ACH Ch 16 p. 494 – 505. Also on this day, an online quiz will open up in Blackboard on Chapter 19 (which we are not covering in class). It will be open until Friday, Feb 8 at 9:00 am and during that time you can take it up to three times. Please remember to take it!

Thanks to all who submitted SkillBuilder #1 today either in paper or via email. If you sent it by email you will get it back by email, by Tuesday of next week. Make sure you got an email confirmation that I received it, otherwise – I didn’t get your paper. Papers submitted in hard copy during class will likely be returned on Monday. Remember you have another one due on Friday, February 1 and for those who don’t yet have the reader I will expand the alternative/online source options over the weekend.

You might want to fill in the rest of the note page that we began in class today as you complete and review the readings from Chapter 15 (if you missed class, here’s the notes page).

The voting is in! The most popular chapters were 16, 23, 24 and 28. On Monday I’ll distribute an updated syllabus page with all the details about what to read and where our deeper focus will lie in each of the course’s four units. During Unit 1, we’ll be using Chapters 16 and 17 most. For Monday please read Henretta ACH Ch 16 p. 474-484. Those pages are posted as a PDF on Blackboard if you are still awaiting a 5th edition of the textbook.

Take the Quiz Online! Also, I’ve put up a short quiz on Blackboard that should be available now until Monday at noon. You can take it up to three times (15 minutes per attempt) and I’d recommend that you try it more than once so you get a feel for how the online quizzes and re-takes work on Blackboard. Your score will show up in My Grades (so I can check the automatic score reporting functions) but will not count towards your grade.

PS – Got 11 minutes? Listen to this podcast from NPR’s Planet Money on how (and when) we got the dollar bill. It may surprise you. In your reading for Monday, Henretta mentions on p. 478 that the Republicans, now firmly back in power in Congress and the White House after the end of Reconstruction, developed a national banking system – but there’s much more to the story. The clip’s too long to play in class but it’s worth a listen.

(a Civil War-era 2 dollar note from a New York Bank)

I’ve posted some links to online primary sources suitable for use in the first SkillBuilder, in case you don’t yet have the documents reader – just click on the SkillBuilder1 tab above. Hopefully that will get us started while we’re all waiting for the replacement texts to arrive.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our investigation groups in class today! Here’s what to do before we next meet on Wednesday, 1/23.

1) Read the syllabus. You got a paper version in class, or click in the left sidebar for a full-color PDF or online flipbook version.

2) Read Chapter 15 pages 446 to 466 in Henretta, America: A Concise History 5th edition. Your books should look like this:

If you have the 4th edition of the Henretta text instead, then read pages 437-456. If your book is still shrink-wrapped, you might want to leave it that way for easier return to the bookstore. I have contacted them to let them know their mistake and to ask how we can resolve it, and I will let you know their answer as soon as I find out what the options are.

If you do not have the textbook yet, I’ve made a PDF of the first reading assignment and put it on Blackboard, so check there.

3) Take this poll to see what topics we’ll look at in greater detail this semester.

4) If you have the Documents book, you can begin on your first SkillBuilder assignment which is due Friday, Jan 25. This assignment is explained in the syllabus on p. 4 or under the “SkillBuilders” tab above.