Vocab
Pullman Strike
D: Nationwide railroad strike (American Railway Union, run by Eugene Debs) ultimately disrupts US mail service, giving the federal government a way to intervene. US Army troops were deployed in an outsized violent response.
E: Wage cuts with no price decreases in the Pullman factory towns.
S: Broad power of federal government over interstate commerce essentially makes national strikes illegal. The Pullman Company ultimately allows people their jobs back if they reject the unions.
Haymarket Bombing
D: Knights of Labor are blamed for violence erupting as a result of a labor protest in Chicago at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company demanding an 8 hour work day (there was some violence from police, but none from the union). Anarchists, angry at police presence, held their own gathering separate from the union and hurled a bomb, whereupon the police responded with random gunfire.
E: Factory conditions were unhealthy and inhumane. More people in the American labor movement were socialists and communists, against the capitalist system because it exploited workers. Many were German immigrants.
S: Labor activists were actually arrested for the bombing in a corrupt trial where the judge ultimately dismissed all charges. More people join the American Federation of Labor, propaganda labels unions and union protests dangerous. More fear of immigrants spread, and labor unions saw those protesting as martyrs and an inspiration for future strikes
MAIN
D – militarism, alliance, imperialism, nationalism
E – M- belief that nations should build their resources to be stronger than other nations. A – US had none, secret alliances cause a domino effect into the war. I – compete for land and resources throughout the world. N – my country is better than yours.
S – WWII
Social Darwinism
D: Supremacy of wealthy over poor and white Americans over Americans of other races. The government should not help struggling people because it weakens the herd
E: Darwin’s Origin of the Species “survival of the fittest” and the philosophy that “the fittest are able to accumulate wealth, unfit are inherently lazy and stupid”
S: Eugenics, “better babies.” There’s also sterilization: Mentally ill, immigrants, black people, Native Americans, unwed mothers
13th amendment
D – slavery is illegal except under prison conditions
E –Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
S –congress enforcing the amendment, require confederate states to ratify this amendment to regain representation, and pass the civil rights act of 1866 a series of laws to go against the black codes
Fascism
D: Form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints with the goals of internal cleansing and external expansion
E: Italy, Mussolini, absolute power of state and factory owners
S: WW2
Kellogg Briand Pact
D: One of 5 treaties that end of the war (including the Treaty of Versailles. France and US to “outlaw” war. No public support for war due to disruptions in trans-Atlantic supply chains. Signatories shall renounce war as a national policy and signatories shall settle disputes by peaceful means. 47 countries sign.
E: Biggest peacekeeping effort and set of alliances coming out of WW1. Issues: to protect against Germany response to the fact that the US failed to join the League of Nations, Russia’s communism frightened Western nations, global and national economies were depleted by the war
S: Since countries could still act in self-defense, abide by other treaties, and there was limited enforcement. When Japan invades Manchuria, it becomes clear that KB is not going to be able to prevent war. Ideas of the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact were the primary influence on the creation of the United Nations in 1945.
14th amendment
D – all people born in the united states are citizens and afforded due process. Southern people have to be voted by congress to get power.
E –article 1, section 2 of the constitution. Changes 3/5 comp
S – full personhood is guaranteed to everyone. Access to banks, land, and voting although still determined by the states
Washington Naval Treaty
D: Between US, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, limits naval armaments/arms race. For every 5 battleships the US and Britain could build, the Japanese could build 3, the Italians could build 1 ¾ (keep in mind that no one was building this small of an amount of ships-so no one ever build ¾ of a ship). US and Britain are allowed more because they maintained navies in their territories. EMPHASIS ON THE PACIFIC
E: Goal of no more world war, renegotiating alliances, fear of rising Japanease militarism (1922)
S: Lots of loopholes-for instance, cruiser ships were not included-so it creates new kinds of arms races anyway
15th amendment
D – all men can vote regardless of anything
E – south didn’t give black men right to vote, Grant gives the right to all men
S – a lot more black representation at the state and national level, backlash in the south of the amendment
Geneva Convention
D: 1906 version (in use during WW1) covered convoys and medical transport (these were vehicles that had not existed in previous wars), which were subject to capture but had to be returned and could only be used for treatment of the wounded. New laws about the management of the dead and broader international cooperation.
E: Series of international treaties begun in 1864, closely associated with the Red Cross: protection of civilians, providing aid to the wounded, no attacking hospitals, rules to prevent torture against POWs.
S: 1949 version responds to WW2, adds prohibition of taking hostages, clarifies use of torture against POWs, guarantees due process and requires no discriminatory treatment on basis of race, religion, nationality, or political beliefs
Spanish-American War
D – US does not have a strong start out of the gate but Spain’s decaying military is revealed. With a victory outside of the capital of the Philippines and the taking of Cuba’s San Juan Heights (courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders), even though disease took out significant American forces, the Spanish still lose at Santiago de Cuba and a cease-fire is agreed to in August with the Treaty of Paris signed in December.
E – Cuba tries over and over to gain independence from Spain. In the late 1890s, while US government said they did not want an armed conflict with Spain, President McKinley became increasingly concerned about the safety of American lives and property in Cuba, stationing the battleship Maine to Havana harbor in Jan 1898. It explodes, ¾ of occupants die, William Randolph Hearst calls for war with Spain well before any investigation can be completed.
S – This treaty gives the US Guam, Puerto Rico and The Philippines.