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  • Where we left off in the last video

  • the north has just won the Civil War.

  • Unfortunately for Abraham Lincoln,

  • it was two months after he was assasinated;

  • 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

  • to both sides.

  • But it's usually refered to the actual reconstruction to the south

  • and to some degree, kind of the reform of the south.

  • And I'm gonna glaze over lot of details,

  • like I did in the last video, and I might

  • ignore some major events that might have been important

  • but don't worry i'll get back to them

  • but the three big things that happened during reconstructions

  • other than the fact that the north were occupying the south

  • and essensially to a large degree suspending democracy in the south

  • and installing its own pollititions and its own law makers

  • is that the United States passed the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth ammendments

  • these are nown as the reconstructions ammendments.

  • and in 1865 you have the thirteenth ammendment

  • and this abolished slavery

  • ended slavery

  • we talked about the emancipation proclomation

  • and that was essentially Abraham Lincoln's exacutive orders

  • this was the speach he made but now it became an official law

  • in 1865

  • but in 1868 you have the fourteenth ammendment

  • which made everyone - ever person- born in the United States

  • a citizen and this includes the free slaves

  • so its kind of like the slaves are now free and they are also citizens

  • and in 1870 you have the fifteenth ammendment which gave all

  • free men the right to vote

  • and obviously now all men were free

  • 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 fourteenth ammendment also introduced the

  • due process which i wont go into details here,

  • but it essentially said "look the government has to go

  • under a due process or

  • where essentially it has its its

  • subject to its own laws when determining

  • whether it can take away property from or in some

  • way incurr, I guess, in some way infringe on rights of other people but we'll talk, we'll probably do

  • a whole video on that

  • but these were the real take aways so it really brought the

  • former slaves, at least by law, by these ammendments on equal

  • standing. but we know that in practice that didn't happen. And you go fastforwards 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 you essentially

  • 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 kind of anti-slavery and you know, Abraham

  • Lincoln was 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 to a large degree and you know I put Democracy in quotes because even in this period the North had essentaily

  • not occupied it anymore but the elections--these were things that were heavily contested, you have both

  • sides of them kind of exerting force and in particular you have the Jim Crow Laws being passed in the

  • South and they're called "Jim Crow" based on this parody of the early 1800s. It was a practice for white

  • men in the South at this time were even well before this in order to parody blacks they would paint their

  • face black and they would act silly and all of this. Jim Crow was the name of one of these characters

  • that was protrayed in the early 1800s--I think Jumping Jim Crow was the name--so that's where the laws

  • come from, but the Jim Crow laws essentially segregated blacks and whites in the South and 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-war, this post-Civil War boom in the econom,

  • where you hadthis kind of massive building of the railroads and steam engines and you know...to some

  • degree it was the First--well, I don't want to say the first, there was kind of many- there was kind

  • of many ages of mass inovation--but all of these things tend to 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 to go off of the

  • gold and silver standard and they go to the gold standard. And what that happens is that anyone left

  • on the silver standard or partially both, the gold and silver standard, their currency would de-value,

  • and back then it was known as an unbalanced negative for your currency to de-value, we can later talk

  • about that... and so the US decides to follow and the big, the big actor here was Germany that decided

  • to go off of the silver standards and go on the pure gold standard. And so the US decided to follow suit

  • with the Coinage Act, in 1873, but this leads to a huge--they called the Panic of 1870, theres a couple

  • of things here. One, it completely demolishes the price of silver, although it was happening on a normal

  • basis. It hurts the silver miners and the industries associated with the silver miners--but I guess more

  • importantly, it restricts the money supply, now I won't go into all of the economic stuff. When you restrict

  • the money supply, you essentially increase interest rates and it essentially pops the bubble that was

  • forming, due to the railroads and all of the booming business and then you essentially have the US entering

  • a depressionand that depression last from 1873 (when the Coinage Act and the bubble burst) all the way

  • to 1879 but lucky for the United States after that time period

  • After it recovered from the depression (at a super fast rate) in 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 was amazing! Because only 100 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 did not view as having relevance to them

  • 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 the United States kind of kept to itself it wasn't really interested in

  • controlling other nations or other people

  • But in 1898 you had this constant (Until 1898 Cuba was a Spanish colony

  • and there had been many revolts tried against the Spanish by the Cubans

  • and the United States was fairly sympathetic to the Cubans plight

  • They were another country in the New world trying to hold their own against a European power

  • and the Spanish were fairly infamous for cracking down on their subjects pretty hard

  • and so in 1898 during the revolt against the Spanish the US sent some

  • ships over to Havana harbour to essentially protect American interests

  • This might resonate a little bit to the Mexican American War where we kind of sent things close to

  • another country to protect our own interests and make sure that nothing outrageous occurs

  • While in Havana Harbour you have an American battleship called the Maine

  • That explodes and sinks

  • and this is an actual picture of it

  • This is fun because we are entering the point in history when pictures start to become relevant

  • although even in the mid eighteen sixties you had pictures

  • That's a picture of Abraham Lincoln

  • The Maine gets sunk, the people who want to declare war on Spain

  • say Hey Spain must have blown up the Maine (although this is still a complete mystery on the actual cause;

  • some say that it was a random explosion, some even cite conspiracies that would allow the US to justify

  • entering the war while some say that Spain did it for whatever reason

  • It did not like this American fleet in Havana Harbour)

  • Regardless to say after it happened it made the Amercian public angry

  • The American government angry and they declared a very short lived war on Spain

  • They won prettyhandedly

  • The big takeaway from the Spanish-American War is that the US essentially became and empire

  • and started to have control of othe countries

  • Such as its temporary control of Cuba, it also (because it won) it got control of Guam which is right

  • over there

  • It still has control of Guam

  • It also got control of the Phillipines from Spain

  • and it maintained control of the Phillipines until the end of World War II

  • It also got control of Puerto Rico which is still part of the US though not as an offical state

  • it is US territory

  • At this point the US becomes an empire and then you fast forward ot 1914 war breaks out in Europe

  • I need to do a whole series fo videos on World War One

  • But war breaks out in Europe, particularly the two strongest powers that are really at each other in

  • this time period are the British Empire and Germany

  • You have this situation where the US is trying its hardest to avoid war and sustain neutrality

  • Obviously the American people were predominantly of English decsent and were from English speaking countries

  • So there were some sympathies for the British Empire for Great Britain

  • But they wanted to stay neutral, however what happened was that the British had a blockade of the Germans

  • They had a kind of stranglehold. The Germans wanted to have a blockade of the British

  • As Great Britain was an island, it oculd really maybe win the war because it could somehow strangle the

  • island, if it could blockade the island. But unfortunately for Germany

  • it did not have a navy that was as strong

  • So you get close to 1917 actually 1915,16,17

  • Germany starts to get desperate so it sends its submarines (U-boats) into the Atlantic

  • So they say that if we cannot blockade Great Britain we can at least start harrasing or even blowing

  • ships up that are trying to trade with Great Britain in order to create fear

  • and have the equivalent of a blockade

  • At first Germany does some minor things.

  • As the war goes on however it becomes more and more desperate

  • and it starts to attack civilian ships, cruise liners, American starts dying becasue these

  • U-boats are just willy-nilly torpedoeing ships

  • The US doesn't tolerate this anymore and after the Zimmerman Telegram they enter the war

  • in 1917

  • Germany did not take the US that seriously at that point but they learned that they should have

  • And then you fast forward to 1918 when the US was definetly one of the major powers