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US history
Course: US history > Unit 10
Lesson 1: United States history overview- Why study US history, government, and civics?
- US History Overview 1: Jamestown to the Civil War
- US History overview 2: Reconstruction to the Great Depression
- US History overview 3: WWII to Vietnam
- Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination
- When Capitalism is great and not-so-great
- 20th century US capitalism and regulation
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US History overview 2: Reconstruction to the Great Depression
Reconstruction to the Great Depression. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- What caused the 1929 stock market crash?
I never understand economics.(136 votes)- I would say the cause was the Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates creating a 'boom' due to everybody borrowing. People borrowed money to invest in commodities, then when the fed raised interest rates it caused severe deflation with a sharp drop in the price of commodities and the stock market. Everybody sold off everything as the dollar grew stronger but there was a big decrease in the money supply so it became hard to expand the economy. That's how I understood the root causes of the great depression
We could have recovered from it much sooner if the government had backed off on spending, FDR's administration did not know proper economics. In 1920 there was a 'great depression' too but no one has ever heard of it. It was caused by the inflation of the money supply due to WW1 if I remember right. It was actually worse than the first year of the real Great Depression in 1929 in terms of unemployment. The government halved spending in 1920, cut taxes, and the Federal reserve stayed out of it and we recovered big time by the next summer. This is what I understand from what I've been learning about economics but you may want to fact check all of this but it gets you started(132 votes)
- In WW1 what was it that made the U.S. enter into the war? and why just for one year, wouldn't Woodrow Wilson know that the war was on the decline and ending very soon?(7 votes)
- The cause (as differentiated from the cause celebre or justification for choosing an action) of any country making a monumental decision like entering a war is always complex and frequently involves issues seemingly unrelated to the actual conflict. US entry into WW I is no different. The justifications for US involvement have been noted above, but the causative factors for US political and other leadership to want to make that decision are still not widely acknowledged in America and when they are, are hotly contested to this day. There is a school of thought that says you can't really begin to understand an event as history until 50 to 100 years afterwards because so many people still rely on a particular reading of events to support their current efforts.
If you are interested, look into the actions and intentions of US president Woodrow Wilson and how those relate to the concurrent rise of fascism as a political theory around the world. You will quickly discover the effects the by-then ongoing changes in US educational practice and monetary practice are also deeply involved in the country choosing to enter WW I when and how it did.
The justification for entering the war was the Zimmerman Cable/Telegram and the sinking of the SS Lusitania, but the causes that made those actions sufficient reason to go to war are complex, seemingly unrelated and still disputed.(10 votes)
- Although FDR didnt do so well as a president, why was he elected 3 times??(4 votes)
- I'd disagree with you and say he did do well, passing many programs that although didn't end the Depression, but remedied it and reformed business, many of which are still around today, such as Social Security(5 votes)
- What caused the great depression?(3 votes)
- Many things all worked together to create this disaster, but the main cause was probably the stock market crash on September 18, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. Over inflation, too much debt accumulation, droughts causing crop failure, and bad government economical policies all contributed as well.(5 votes)
- at, what is Ottoman Empire? 10:18
just wondering because I don't have a lot of previous knowledge about world history.
Thanks!(4 votes)- Good question. The Ottoman Empire could be considered the Muslim Empire from the 14th century to 1923 when the Ottoman Empire fell and the Muslim Empire was considered gone. The Ottoman Empire is not a Muslim country with many Muslim people. The Ottoman Empire was an empire that succeeded many empires from the original expansion of Islam that started around 633 C.E. from the first four Khalifahs (caliphs in English) and the Ummayad Empire. However, by the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim Empires had lost sight of their original goal to spread the message of Islam and by the time of WWI, the power of the Ottoman Empire had been declining for centuries.
For more information, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Expansion_and_apogee_.281453.E2.80.931566.29
I hope this helps!(2 votes)
- How did conflict & violence shape the development of American society between the Reconstruction to The Great Depression?(3 votes)
- Did you watch the video or just paste your homework question into the comments? The video goes over the Spanish-American War and the United States' resulting transition into an empire quite well. You can also cite the 19th amendment since the increased reliance on women's labor (and corresponding increase in value in American society), due primarily to the losses during the Civil War and the mobilization of the Spanish-American War, was a significant factor in the granting of their suffrage.(4 votes)
- Is there a law against succeding from the union now?(3 votes)
- Theoretically, no. There's no legal prohibition against secession.
The problem with secession - the same problem that the South had - is that the United States will use military force to reclaim their territories that make a serious attempt at secession while also using international influence to discourage other countries from recognizing the upstart nation.
The new country will have to earn its place among the nations of the world by proving its military and economic strength - at the same time - while being actively opposed by the most powerful military and economic power in the world.(4 votes)
- what caused america to go in to wwtwo(2 votes)
- America was already considering joining the war, but Pearl Harbor was really the catalyst. Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack by the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawai'i. Almost the whole US armada was destroyed. Japan thought that since the US had no major navy now, it could easily take some US possessions in the Pacific, including Hawai'i. Fortunately for the US, they managed to build back their navy even stronger than before in less than nine months.(3 votes)
- The United States is, as we know, made up of many different races and ethnicities, but I was always under the assumption that it was originally a completely British colony? When did these different cultures spread into America? I'd assume the French and Spanish came from their former territories, but what about German, Italian, etc.? This video suggests they arrived around the 1879-1890 economic boom, is that accurate?(2 votes)
- in the first half of the 20th century, Ellis Island was established as a legal way for people to immigrate here. lots of people would scrape together what little money they had, and would board a boat to america. the boats were often very crowded, and sometimes unsanitary. people sometimes did not make it across the Atlantic. If they got to Ellis Island they would have to take tests for literacy and strengths. most people described it as an awful experience. once they got through Ellis Island, people would have to go and find a job, often as young kids. Often a family would only have enough money for one family member to make the journey, so usually the dad would go and get a job in "the land of opportunity". once the dad had made enough money, he would spend the money to bring the rest of his family overseas. To answer your question, as a result of Ellis Island, America became "A Melting Pot" of different cultures and races.
This might be a little young for you. but this is a link to a Schoolhouse Rock song about this very topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32l3sTFRFX8(4 votes)
- at, what was the role of women in WWI? 13:35
I mean, how did exactly women contribute toward the war?(2 votes)- Because men were on such short supply, women did most of the work. Like assembling weapons, taking care of other people, nursing, building war vehicles, the list goes on and on and on. Women were essential to the war effort.(4 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Where we
left off in the last video, the North had just won the Civil War. Unfortunately for Abraham Lincoln, it was two months after
he was assassinated. But now the North was dominant and essentially occupied the South. And we enter a period
called Reconstruction, and Reconstruction can
refer to one of two things and they're somewhat related. One is just the
Reconstruction from the war. Obviously there was a lot of
damage done on both sides. But it's usually referred
to the actual Reconstruction of the South and to some degree, kind of the reform of the South. I'm going to glaze over a lot of details, like I did in the last video. I might ignore some major events that you might find important. And I'll get back to them, don't worry. But the three big things that happened during Reconstruction, other than the fact of the
North occupying the South and essentially, to a large degree, suspending democracy in the South and installing its own
politicians, its own lawmakers, is that the United States passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. These are known as the
Reconstruction Amendments. In 1865, you have the 13th Amendment and this abolished slavery. Let me write this here. This ended slavery. We talked about the
Emancipation Proclamation and that was essentially Abraham
Lincoln's executive order, this was a speech he made. But now it became official law in 1865. Then in 1868, you have the 14th Amendment which made everyone, every person born in the
United States a citizen, and this includes the freed slaves, so it's kind of like,
the slaves are now free and they are also citizens. And then in 1870, you
have the 15th Amendment which gave all free men the right to vote. And obviously, now all men were free. There were no non-free men. So, the right to vote. And I emphasize the men
because even at this point, women did not have the right to vote. The right to vote. And the 14th Amendment also
introduced a due process which, I won't go into the details
here, but it essentially said, "Look, the government has
to go under a due process "where it's subject to its
own laws when determining "whether it can take away property from "or in some way, "infringe on rights of other people." But we'll probably do a whole
video on that in the future. But these were the real takeaways. So it really brought the
former slaves, at least by law, by these amendments, on equal standing. But we know that in
practice, that didn't happen. And you fast forward to
1877, and you essentially have the Reconstruction
period formally ending. The occupation of the South formally ends. And as soon as the occupation
of the South formally ends, and democracy comes
about, you have a bunch of people coming to power. And at this point of time, the Republicans were
essentially the North, and these were the people
who were anti-slavery. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. And the Democrats come
to power in the South. And we can talk about how
the different perceptions of the different parties change over time. But at this point, as soon
as the occupation ended, and I put democracy in quotes
because even in this period, the North has essentially
not occupied anymore, but the elections, these were things that were heavily contested. You have both sides of
them exerting force. And in particular, you
have the Jim Crow Laws being passed in the South. And they're called the Jim Crow based on this parody in the early 1800s. It was a practice for white men in the South at this time, or even well before this,
in order to parody blacks they would paint their face black and they would act silly and all of this. And Jim Crow was the name
of one of these characters that was portrayed in the early 1800s. I think it was Jumping
Jim Crow, was the name. That's where the laws come from. But the Jim Crow Laws essentially segregated blacks and whites in the South. Even though the idea might
have been that they were equal, the reality were that the
conditions for blacks, the places that they were
separated to, were far inferior. They had to use separate
drinking fountains, they had to use separate bathrooms. They couldn't sit in the
same parts of theaters or in the same parts of buses. And these lasted all the way until the Civil Rights Movement,
all the way to the 1960s. Now, at the same time that
all of this was happening, you kinda had this post Civil
War boom in the economy, where you had this massive building of the railroads and steam engines. To some degree, it was the first, well, I don't wanna say the first. There was many ages of mass innovation. But all of these things
tend to always lead to a little bit of a bubble. And then in 1873, what
you have happening is a lot of the governments of
the world start going off of the gold and silver standard, and they go to the gold standard. And what then happens is,
is that anyone who's left on the silver standard or partially both, the gold and silver standard, their currency would devalue. And back then, it was viewed
as an unambiguous negative for your currency to devalue. We can later talk about that,
there's more nuance there. So the United States
decide to follow suit. And actually, the big
actor here was Germany that decided to go off
of the silver standard and going on pure gold standard. And so the United States
decide to follow suit with the Coinage Act in 1873. But this leads to a huge, they
call it the Panic of 1873. There's a couple of things here. One, it completely demolishes
the price of silver, although this was already
happening on a global basis. It hurts the silver miners
and the industries associated with the silver miners. But I guess more importantly, now this restricts the money supply. And I won't go into all
of the economics of it. When you restrict the money supply, you essentially increase interest rates, and it essentially popped
the bubble that was forming due to the railroads and
all of the booming business. And then you essentially have the United States entering a depression. And that depression lasts from 1873, when the Coinage Act and
kind of this bubble burst, all the way to 1879. But lucky for the United
States, after that time period, after it recovered from the depression, it actually recovered
at this super fast rate, and this was one of the
fastest economic growths in US history. You had this huge influx of immigrants, tens of millions, from Europe. And by 1890, the United States
was now the richest country in the world on a per capita basis, which is amazing because
only a hundred years ago, it was kind of this
colony of Great Britain, or part of the British Empire. It was kind of this thing that the European powers didn't
view as that relative. But now it was the richest
country in the world. And then you fast forward to 1898. And it starts to, essentially,
become a bit of an empire. Until this time, United
States kind of kept to itself. It wasn't really interested in controlling other
nations or other people. But in 1898, until 1898, Cuba was a Spanish colony. And there had been many revolts try against the Spanish by the Cubans. And the United States, or the Americans, were fairly sympathetic to the Cubans. After all, here's another
country in the New World, again, trying to revolt
against a European power. And the Spanish were pretty infamous for cracking down pretty hard. So in 1898, while there was
a revolt against the Spanish, the United States set some ships over to Havana Harbor, essentially to protect American interests. This might resonate a little bit relative to maybe the Mexican-American War, that we kind of send things
close to another country to protect our interests and make sure nothing crazy happens. Then while in Savannah
Harbor, not Savannah, while in Havana Harbor,
you have a battleship, a US battleship called
the Maine, the Maine, that explodes and sinks. And this is an actual picture of it. This is fun because we're
entering the point in history where pictures start to become relevant. Although, even in the mid
1860s, you had pictures. That's a picture of Abraham Lincoln. The Maine gets sunk. The people who wanna
declare war on Spain say, "Hey, Spain must've blown up the Maine." Although it's still a complete mystery on what was the actual cause. Some people say it was
just a random explosion. There's even conspiracy
theorists who believe that the United States did
it to itself intentionally to justify entering the
war, while some say, "Hey, no. Spain did it
for whatever reason. "It didn't like this American
fleet in Havana Harbor." But regardless to say,
after this happened, it allowed, it made the
American public angry, the American government angry, and they declared war on Spain. And it was actually a
very short-lived war. They won pretty handedly. The big takeaway from
the Spanish-American War is that the United States
essentially became an empire. It started to have control
of other countries, and in particular, it had
temporary control of Cuba. But it also, because it
won, it got control of Guam, which is right over there, and
it still has control of Guam. It also got control of the
Philippines from Spain, and it maintained control
of the Philippines until the end of World War II. And it got control of Puerto Rico, which is still part of the United States. It's not an official state but it is United States territory. So at this point, the United
States becomes an empire. And then you fast forward to 1914. War breaks out in Europe. I need to do a whole series
of videos on World War I. But war breaks out in Europe. Particularly, the two strongest powers that are really at each
other at this time period, are the British Empire and Germany. You have this situation
where United States is trying its hardest to stay neutral. Obviously, the American
people were predominantly of English descent, it's an
English speaking country. So there were some sympathies
for the British Empire, for Great Britain. But they wanted to stay neutral. But what you had happening
is that the British had a blockade of the Germans. They really had a strangle hold. And the Germans wanted to
have a blockade of the British because Great Britain was an island. It was an island, it could
really maybe win the war if it could somehow strangle the island, if it could blockade the island. But unfortunately for Germany, it did not have as strong of a navy. So you get close to 1917,
actually 1915, 1916, 1917, Germany starts to get desperate. So it sends its submarines
into the Atlantic. They say, "Well, if we can't
blockade Great Britain, "at least maybe we can
start harassing ships "or even blowing up ships that are trying "to trade with Great Britain
and that'll make people "afraid to, it'll
essentially be the equivalent "of a blockade." And at first, Germany
does some minor things. But as the war goes on, it
gets more and more desperate. It gets more and more desperate,
and it starts attacking civilian ships, cruise liners, Americans start dying
because German u-boats are just willy-nilly, just
essentially torpedoing ships. So the US doesn't tolerate it anymore, enters the war in 1917. Germany didn't take the
United States that seriously up to that point. But it learned, and we'll
do a whole series of videos on this, that it should have. And then you fast forward to 1918, and the United States
was definitely one of, the British were doing alright, but the United States
really turned the tides. No one really expected
how large of a power they had essentially
gotten involved in the war. Then you fast forward to
1918 and the war ends. The real takeaway of this, I
mean there's a bunch of these and we'll talk more about this
in depth in future videos, is that it ended some of the nations that were on the losing end. Austria-Hungary no longer was a nation, at least in this form. The Ottoman Empire no longer
was a nation in this form. And as we will learn later,
there were huge reparations by the victors on Germany,
and that to a large degree, may have led to World War II. But we won't talk in depth
about that right now. The other things that started
to happen at this point, in 1920 you have the 18th and the 19th Amendments being passed. The 18th enacted Prohibition, where all of a sudden,
you made alcohol illegal in the United States. And you know the irony of it is, that's when you have all of these movies about these bootleggers and
you have this whole crime scene that develops around illegal alcohol. But at the same time
the 19th Amendment was maybe a little less controversial. And the 19th Amendment, it finally gave women the right to vote. Right to vote. And one of the arguments against having women the right
to vote before this time was, "Hey, you know, only men are
fighting for the country. "Only they have the right to vote. "Only they can be soldiers." But during World War I, and this happened not just in the US, this happened
worldwide in World War I, that because so many men were fighting, women really had to take
up the slack domestically. And they, essentially, were
a big part of the war effort in terms of just working at the factories and producing things. So that was probably one
of the big things that, on kind of a global
basis, all of a sudden, women started to get the right to vote. Also, at this period,
you have in the 1920s, you have another post-war economic boom that really develops into
a post-war economic bubble all the way until 1929. And then you have the stock market crash, and then I think some of us know that, after that period, the
Great Depression ensues. And the Great Depression continues. And this was a global Great Depression, and it continues all the way to the US entry in World War II. And I'll leave you there.