26c: America at 100

The Civil War - or War of the Rebellion, or the Second American Revolution - nearly ripped the nation apart. Recovery would be no small task. With Lincoln dead, the radical Republicans rah rampant, resulting regrettably in further chaos. The Confederate States had to be reunited with the Union, and the rights of the newly freed blacks established. Unfortunately, Reconstruction was easier said than done. The need to destroy slavery was a given, as was the suppression of Confederate settlement. Lincoln and other moderate Republicans believed the Southern states could be reassimilated once they repealed secession and ratified the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery for good. Ex-Confederates could regain their citizenship upon swearing a loyalty oath. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, tried to carry out these moderate policies, but was opposed by the Radical Republicans, who wished to punish the South. The Radicals began passing punitive legislation over Johnson's veto, and ultimately impeached him. Johnson retained his Presidency by one vote in the Senate. The Radical Republicans' desire to integrate black Americans into public life was just, but their way of going about it was  often criminally wrong. They effectively opened the door to a Democrat-conservative coalition which wanted to bring back the old ways (if not the old Confederacy), including white superiority. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan openly persecuted blacks . Segregation became the law in many Southern states. Externally, the South was pacified by 1876, but the old sores of inequality for blacks and Civil War resentment continued to fester throughout the nation.

Beyond a doubt, the most colorful part of our national myth is the settling of the American West. Seen in this light, the Civil War was merely a diversion. With the fighting over, Northerners and Southerners alike worked to push the American frontier westward. Cowboys, Indians, miners, soldiers, farmers, railroaders, and yes, even Medicine Women played their unique parts in fulfilling our Manifest Destiny. These years were exciting ones for Americans - for all Americans except for the Indians, who were routinely driven off of their lands, in a brutal form of ethnic cleansing. The American general William Tecumseh Sherman (how's that for an ironic name?) openly stated that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." As before, the white men were usually victorious, but not always. The 1876 defeat of the old Civil War cavalryman George Custer at Little Big Horn underscored how desperately the Indians fought for their land and their lifestyle. At the shameful December 29, 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, more than 300 Sioux were killed by the US cavalry. On January 15, 1891 the Sioux formally surrendered to the United States, formally ending the Indian resistance in North America. From that time on, Indians who wanted even a semblance of their tribal life were forced to live on reservations established on lands nobody wanted.

The nation continued to grow. Immigrants from east and west kept pouring into America; the transcontinental railroads which sprang up after the Civil War expedited settling the American interior. The Homestead Act of 1862, which awarded 40 acres of unclaimed government land to anyone willing to build a house on the land and live there for five years, made it affordable. Of course, there was the matter of getting the Indians off the land, which was handled in the usual shameful matter, as we have seen. According to the "Frontier Theory" of the Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, Americans moved farther westward with each generation and became more American in the process. The farther from the East Coast the Americans moved, the more democratic they became, dropping European customs as "official" churches and aristocratic social circles. This explanation of the unique American character sat well with Americans of all classes. Apparently, fulfillment of the Manifest Destiny had made America even greater.

Of course, by the time Turner presented his theory in 1893, the US Census of 1890 had declared that the frontier had officially disappeared. Twenty years after the Golden Spike had completed America's first transcontinental railroad, East and West had finally grown together. The question was, had America's Manifest Destiny been completely fulfilled? Many Americans, like the New York City police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, believed that the United States had begun a new stage of its Manifest Destiny. To men like Roosevelt, America was obliged to expand overseas. Thus the young nation found itself in the same situation as the European powers around 1500. Expansion seemed to be necessary, but where could America expand? And what justification could America offer?