Assessment on "1800 CE to the Present"

Assessment 10 pages (3003 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

AD to Present

The Civil War

Julia Ward Howe composed her "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the tune of "John Brown's Body," which the Union soldiers sang in the Civil War. John Brown had been a controversial figure -- and one whose sanity was questioned by men like Herman Melville in his anthology of Civil War poetry, which included a composition called "Weird John Brown." Henry David Thoreau on the other hand praised and extolled the virtues of the radical abolitionist, whose extremism essentially led to his execution. While Melville saw Brown as a symptom of the times, Thoreau saw him as a revolutionary guide -- and that same sense of revolution is what inspired "Civil Disobedience."

Problems with the Constitution are what led to the outbreak of the Civil War. The South believed States Rights were protected by the Constitution, and the Union held that Federal Law trumped States Rights. So it is no wonder that Lysander Spooner would call the U.S. Constitution unfit to exist in 1870. Thomas Jefferson was finding it problematic at the end of the 18th century with the Alien and Sedition Acst. Even in George Washington's day, the Constitution was being confronted by questions, for example, of war-making (Lofgren 672). Madison and Hamilton (both involved in the framing of the Constitution) argued whether the right to declare war should be of the executive or of the legislative branch. The problem, as Spooner intimated, is one -- if not inherent in the Constitution itself -- then at least in its interpretation.

During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which prohibits imprisonment without evidence of crime. Lincoln, of course, would also go on to free the slaves of the South to help turn the tide against the Confederates. But that did not mean that the freed slaves were now on an equal footing with whites: One political issue African-Americans faced during this time was how to secure for themselves the freedoms and rights that had now supposedly been granted them with the abolition of slavery. Emancipation did not do much to advance blacks -- it was for the most part a way for Lincoln to undermine the infrastructure of the South and thus cripple it in the War.

Western Ideals

The Ottoman, Russian, Qing, and Tokugawa states in the nineteenth century had not seen the kind of rapid industrial revolution that the West and America in particular had seen in the nineteenth century. Obviously the Industrial Revolution put America and the West in position of power, ushering in a new era of geo-politics and Western Imperialism. The Ottoman, Russian, Qing, and Tokugawa societies, however, maintained cultures that were dynamic and less vulnerable to political-corporate takeover, which is essentially what happened in the West.

Obviously the four Eastern states were both attracted to and repulsed by the new opulence and machinery of the West. The wealth that America promised as a result of Industrialization and "liberty" had its ability to draw the East into adopting the social and political philosophies of the West. Yet, at the same time, the East could readily see a kind of moral decay and corruption in the greedy thirst for capital that was the Industrial Revolution. The ruination of towns, of that same dynamism that made the Eastern strives thrive in their own way, was forever destroyed as a result of the rise of Industry in America. More and more people went to work in the cities, thus creating one of the modern horror settings -- the suburb.

While Western ideals and European and American knowledge certainly influenced the Eastern states, the influence should mostly be seen as negative. American forces were invading the East as early as the nineteenth century, bringing with them all sorts of elements of corruption and making possible the global drug trade. Eventually, the East would modernize just like the West wanted it to.

Legacies of 19th Century Imperialism

America defined its new Imperialism with the notion of "manifest destiny," which by the end of the 19th century was expanded beyond the American frontier to encompass the whole globe.

The new Imperialism of America (and other leading/competing nations in Europe) was, of course, a product of Industrialization. But American Imperialism was an especially devious kind. While America was theoretically isolationist, in practice it was anything but. New Expansionism and Republican ideology (which was kept, fundamentally, in the back pocket of Wall Street) paved the way to World War I -- which saw the final annihilation of Catholic Austria.

America's Imperialistic role was directly related to its wars: The Spanish-American War in 1898, propagated by the yellow journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer who blamed the sinking of the Maine on Spain (a blame that had no truth to it whatsoever), turned public sentiment in favor of war. That war allowed America to go all the way to the Philippines to fight and anchor, in response to which men like Mark Twain helped form the Anti-Imperialist League -- the anti-colonial sentiment in America that wanted to see an end to Imperialist practices. However, the League would draw little political weight as a Republican Washington would serve as the handmaiden of Wall Street -- and corporate America was the new King. 1917 would be the death of the old world -- and the sinking of the Lusitania would help effect it. America's entrance into WWI (through another shady tragedy -- a common theme in American war entry) would present Woodrow Wilson with his chance to promote his pet project, the League of Nations.

Women in WWI

Many women acted as nurses in World War I, following in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale. With men off to fight and die, women took to the workforce to both support their men and Uncle Sam's war effort. WWI helped destroy an entire generation of men in the senseless slaughter that took so many lives in the foreign theater. It also had a destabilizing effect on the domestic social structure. Women's suffrage soon became an issue after the War and so did women's independence. In many ways, WWI changed the face of modern living: it dispensed with the old world ways once and for all and ushered in an era of independence for both genders. Women were used more and more in advertising: sex appeal was used by advertisers to hawk to their goods. While women were made to look and sound more professional, in reality they were being used as tools of the corporations to sell items like cigarettes and pulp magazines.

Women assisted in the war effort by acting in nurses corps and serving as telephone operators. They also helped in the distribution of TNT, which also had negative effects on the women's health.

Because women could now be seen as part of the war, no part of society was safe from war. The idea of total war began to emerge: this was the concept that civilians could be attacked like any other soldiery in the war. This idea would become a part of WWII, of course, with the fire bombing of Dresden and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was preceded by the Lawless Twenties. The 20s did not just roar -- they broke every law in the book (and then made up new ones just so those could be broken too). Grifters abounded and so did threats (which were made real, and which quickly translated into high-hysteria): the Wall Street Bomb Disaster perfectly exampled the reason for Red fever (Bolsheviks had taken over Russia, and revolution frightened the U.S. -- a nation, ironically, built by revolutionaries). Socialists like Eugene Debs were less than welcome by big government (despite being elected).

William Jennings Bryan, leader of the Populist Party, and supposed spokesman of the common man, would cause a split in the Democratic Party with his "cross of gold" speech, and the Republicans would go on to carry the White House all the way to the Great Depression at the end of the 20s -- not before, however, instituting the income tax and the Federal Reserve. The Agrarian Revolt, then, was the last ditch effort of the American Midwest to stop corporate America from taking over the economy by placing the White House in its back pocket. The Agrarian Revolt failed to stop it. Truly, nothing could -- except for the consequences of its own underhanded schemes, witnessed with the collapse of the economy in 1929.

Charles Ponzi was another low point: this grifter was a model for what Wall Street bankers would become. His attempt at the first "Ponzi" scheme ended with a stint in prison. The rest of Wall Street got to go free -- until the collapse in '29, of course. It was Ponzi and people like him -- and banks like Goldman Sachs and their subsidiaries -- that caused the Great Depression in just the same way that they have caused the one we have today.

The… READ MORE

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