The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
American History since 1865
The period from 1865 to 1877 is known as Reconstruction. Victorious in the Civil War, the North attempted, often hesitantly, to “reconstruct” the South by securing civil rights for blacks freed from slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and Fifteenth Amendment sought to secure those basic rights.
Industrial growth was dramatic in the period from 1865 to 1900, but the expansion of industry did not benefit everyone. The newly rich robber barons amassed enormous wealth, which they often displayed crassly. Particularly in the late 1860s and 1870s, corruption riddled American politics. Meanwhile, many factory workers suffered in misery, and farmers bitterly resented their domination by the railroads and by eastern financiers. The resentments of farmers exploded in the Populist party of the 1890s.
Populism soon went into eclipse, but new efforts to bring social justice and economic order to the United States took shape in the Progressive movement. Progressives attacked abuses such as child labor and corporate pillaging, and they worked successfully for women’s suffrage, which was gained with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Progressives and others also supported Prohibition, which became law after the adoption in 1919 of the Eighteenth Amendment.
Progressivism coincided with the emergence of the United States as a world power. After its victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War (1898), the United States steadily raised its profile in international affairs during the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921). Under Wilson, the United States entered World War I in 1917 and played a key role at the Versailles peace conference after the war.
Postwar prosperity came to a shuddering halt with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Elected president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired a series of government programs known as the New Deal. In foreign policy, Roosevelt opposed the aggression of NaziGermany. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States formally entered World War II.
The United States was the only nation to emerge from World War II stronger than at its start. It took the lead in establishing the United Nations, and with the onset of the cold war in the late 1940s it became the leading anti-communist power and head of NATO. Its confrontation with communism led it into the Korean War and the Vietnam War and into proxy wars from Afghanistan to Central America. With the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the sole superpower. To many it appeared that the twentieth century had been the American Century.
At the start of the twenty-first century, American hegemony increasingly appears a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the United States possesses enormous economic, political, and military power and cultural influence. Its seven-trillion-dollar economy is by far the world’s largest. It has overcome the deep internal divisions of the late 1960s and 1970s that were occasioned by the Vietnam War and conflict over civil rights. Despite periodic eruptions, such as the Watergate scandal and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, its politics are basically stable, if usually noisy. It demonstrated its awesome military power in the Persian Gulf War, and its popular culture continues to attract fascination and imitation abroad, even in nations marked by strong anti-Americanism. Its population, now over 270 million, contains a rich mosaic of national origins and cultures. Its Latino population grew by more than ten million in the 1990s. It is not unlikely that by 2005 Latino Americans will form the largest minority group in the United States. The number of Americans of Asian descent has also risen in recent decades, as has the number of American Muslims.
Yet, as the September 11 attacks indicate, the United States is hated in some parts of the world and widely resented in others. At times, opposition to the United States reflects disagreement with specific American policies, such as support for Israel, but often it rests on a perception of the United States as a symbol of materialism and secular values. To many Americans, these criticisms seem to be just another way to say that America is wealthy and free.
