1. Introductory Lecture
Dr. John Holmes
U.S. History After 1877, History 121
Diablo Valley College San Ramon
Summer 2013

2. Introduction
Why are we studying U.S.
history?
What do you expect to get out of
this course?

3. Why a course in American
history?
Because you live here
Practical skills useful in later life
George Santayana: he who does
not learn from history is doomed to
repeat it
Myths and legends, romantic
people and famous events

4. Who is your instructor?
Master’s degree in American History at
San Francisco State University
Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in Russian/Soviet
history
Dissertation on Noah London
Jewish immigrant from Tsarist Russia
Jewish Socialist, garment unionist in New
York
Returns to Russia; prominent industrial
manager; secret dissident
Executed in Stalinist Great Terror in 1937

5. What kind of class will
this be?
Not just the rich and famous
Historical processes behind
famous events
Social, political, economic,
military, diplomatic history
Main focus of class: economic
development, social conflict

6. Consequences of Economic
Development
External: from backwater to most
powerful country in world
1877 to 1992
Internal: the “three I’s”
Industrialization
Immigration
urbanIzation
Result: social polarization, class
conflict

7. What does economic history
mean?
Guiding thread is … money
Wells Fargo
“How the west was won”
Recent events show how
economics is key to American
history

8. American History before 1877
First half of U.S. history survey:
liberty and slavery
Foner, Give Me Liberty, Part 1
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery,
1619-1877
Basic conflict between:
North and South
Free labor and slavery
Slavemasters and capitalists

9. The Civil War: the Second
American Revolution
America: a compromise between
liberty and slavery
The compromise breaks down:
South sees industrial development
as undermining slavery;
North sees grip of South on
American government and society
holding back progress;
Conflict breaks out over West
“Bleeding Kansas”
John Brown and Robert E. Lee

10. Why 1877, and not 1865?
Two big events in 1877, and one in
1876
End of Reconstruction
The Great Railroad Strike
1876: Little Big Horn

11. Reconstruction
The defeated South: Doc. 16-1
Initially: slavery by another name
The Black Codes, doc. 16-2
Not acceptable to blacks in South,
or Radical Republicans in North
Democratic Party, party of slavery
Republicans, party of capitalism

12. Results of Reconstruction
“40 acres and a mule,” and
Thaddeus Stevens
Freedmens’ Bureau: “New Deal”
social reforms
Republican Southern governments
with black participation
Alabama Colored Convention, doc.
16-4

13. From slavery to sharecropping
black farmer autonomy
dependence on credit
cash crops not food crops
Cotton as King
sharecropping generalized to both
white and black small farmers
price drops and general farm crisis

14. End of Reconstruction
Compromise of 1877
Republican Hayes gets Presidency
U.S. troops stop defending
Reconstruction
Ku Klux Klan: military arm of
Democratic Party
Republican governments in South
overthrown
blacks begin to lose the vote

15. 1865-1877 in the North
Rapid economic development
Transcontinental Railroad
South/North issue in 1850s
1867, the Golden Spike
Economic development means class
conflict
Class issues replace race issues
not North versus South or settlers
versus Indians, but rich versus poor
Capital versus labor
Farmers vs. bankers and railroads

16. 1865-1877 in the West
1876: Custer’s Last Stand, or Little
Big Horn
Last Stand of American Indians
Army leaves South to finish the
Indian wars
By 1877: no more barrier to
Western settlement

17. The Great Railroad Strike
of 1877
Largest outburst of popular
rebellion in American history

18. Next class
The Gilded Age: Industrialization
and Westward Expansion
Foner, Chapter 16
Johnson, Chapters 17 and 18
Discussion groups to be completed
and set up on WebCT