An Interactive Presentation by:

Chris Merrell

The development of the Industrial United States (1870 – 1900)

Emergence of Modern America (1890 – 1930)

The Great Depression & WWII (1929 – 1945)

Post War United States (1945 – 1970)

Contemporary United States (1968 – Present)

•Once the enormous task of recovering from the Civil War was

overcome, The United States embarked on an era of growth.

•Big Business began to take off and become a huge part of

the country

•Mechanization brought farming into the realm of big

business as well, making the United States the world's

premier food producer--a position it has never surrendered.

•In the period from 1870 to 1900, the United States became an

industrialized nation

Thomas Edison and the Electric Lamp

Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone

Joseph Glidden and his patent for Barbed Wire

•The demand for labor grew,

and in the late 19th and early

20th centuries many children

were drawn into the labor

force.

•The number of children under

the age of 15 who worked in

industrial jobs for wages

climbed from 1.5 million in

1890 to 2 million in the early

1900s.

"There is work that profits children, and there

is work that brings profit only to employers.

The object of employing children is not to

train them, but to get high profits from their

work."

-- Lewis Hine, 1908

Two big issues during this period

◦ The dilemma of how to maintain the material benefits that flowed from the industrial revolution while bringing the powerful forces creating those benefits under democratic control and managing economic opportunity.

◦ The other was the issue of how to maintain democracy and national identity in the context of increasing immigration and a political environment in which there was widespread corruption and concentration of power.

Foreign policy remained an important issue during this period

The United States stepped onto the international stage in the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century.

When the U.S. joined the Allied side in World War I in 1917, the United States emerged as a world power.

Women continued their struggle for equality. Eventually gained their right to vote in 1920

Recurring racial tension led on the one hand to black nationalism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the first great northward migration of African Americans and on the other to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

The movement to Americanize a generation of immigrants gained strength, leading to the momentous closing of the nation's gates through severe retrenchment of the open-door immigration policies.

Tensions increased among country's various religious groups.

October 29, 1929 the stock market crashes

Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars.

Even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough and America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.

Unemployment during the great depression was at

one of the highest levels ever in history. In America

the unemployment rate reached nearly 25% at its

peak.

1941 with America entered into World War II.

America sided with Britain, France and the Soviet Union against Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The European part of the war ended with Germany's surrender in May 1945. Japan surrendered in September 1945, after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt 32nd President (1933-45)

He created the New Deal to provide relief for the unemployed,

recovery of the economy, and reform of the economic and banking systems, through various agencies, such as:

Works Project Administration (WPA),

National Recovery Administration (NRA), Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA).

1947 - US enunciates policy of aid for nations it deems threatened by communism in what became known as the Truman Doctrine. Cold War with Soviet Union begins.

1948 - America's programme to revive ailing post-war European economies - the Marshall Plan - comes into force. Some $13bn is disbursed over four years and the plan is regarded as a success.

1968 - Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated.

1963 - President John F Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes president.

On May 25, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, he struck a responsive chord with the American people.

The Apollo program, created to meet the goal of landing men on the Moon, enlisted 20,000 companies, hundreds of thousands of individuals, and some 25.5 billion dollars.

On July 20, 1969, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. The Moon landing was a stunning achievement that commanded world attention.

In a TV address, Nixon announces his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, over a 1972 break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters. Gerald Ford is sworn-in as his successor.

"Watergate" is now an all-encompassing term used to refer to: • political burglary • bribery • extortion • Phone tapping • conspiracy • obstruction of justice • destruction of evidence • tax fraud • illegal use of government agencies such as the CIA and the FBI • illegal campaign contributions • use of public money for private purposes.

1973 - Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed. The campaign had claimed some 58,000 American lives.

1979 - US embassy in Tehran, Iran, seized by radical students. The 444-day hostage crisis - including a failed rescue attempt in 1980 - impacts on Carter's popularity and dominates the 1980 presidential election campaign.

1983 - US invades Caribbean nation of Grenada, partly prompted by its concerns over the island's ties with Cuba.

1986 - US warplanes bomb Libyan cities. "Irangate" scandal uncovered, revealing that proceeds from secret US arms sales to Iran were used illegally to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua

1989 - US troops invade Panama, oust its government and arrest its leader, one-time Central Intelligence Agency informant General Manuel Noriega, on drug-trafficking charges.

1991 - US forces play dominant role in war against Iraq, which was triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and ended with the expulsion of Iraqi troops from that country.

2001 11 September - Four passenger aircraft are hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the US Defense Department - the Pentagon - in Washington DC and into a field in Pennsylvania; 3,025 people are killed in the attacks.

It caused panic for the country along with much anger and grief.

Eventually the War in Iraq would follow.

Barack Obamabecame the first majority party African American candidate for president

Defeated Republican John McCain and was inaugurated on January 20, 2009

Americanhistory.si.edu

http://www.mrnussbaum.com/history/history.htm

http://watergate.info/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1230058.stm