American History : Cheat Sheet #1 (Revolution to Civil War).
So Europeans pretty much discovered North America, right?
pre-1492
Umm, no. There were quite a few people here before Europe “discovered” the continent. The fancy word is indigenous. A simple and accurate phrase is “First Peoples.” Because it says who was here first. First peoples, also known as Native Americans, lived in the Americas long before Leif Erickson (11th century) or Christopher Columbus (15th century) ever showed up.
Why did you write “who was here” above?
Because I’m currently writing from a cozy little nook in North America and I wanted to bring up the idea of Eurocentricism. It’s basically the idea that a lot of history we talk about is from the perspective of white Europeans. So if you’re a reader in Lahore, Pakistan or St. Petersburg, Russia, then you might be thinking “why is he writing ‘here?’ I’m not there.” And you would be correct. Although I try to be mindful of using ‘us and them’ phrasing, the reality is that I am at least partially a product of the environment and culture I was brought up in, so the lens I interpret the world through is skewed to a Eurocentric perspective. I recognize and acknowledge that and do my best to continually try and see through the lens of other cultures and mindsets. But as I said, my position is a relative one, not an absolute, so I write about what I know and what I am learning in the best and most inclusive way I am able to today. I am writing, both literally and figuratively, from the vantage point of a North American resident.
Haven’t a bunch of white European guys already written about American history?
Yes.
Should I memorize the original 13 colonies?
Sure.
Should I memorize the main American Indian tribes?
You mean the Apache, Arawak, Blackfeet, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chinook, Chippewa, Choctaw, Creek, Crow, Hopi, Inuit, Iroquois, Mohegan, Navajo, Oneida, Pueblo, Seminole, Shawnee, and Sioux?
Yeah.
Did the United States really do slavery, or is that fake news?
Sadly, yes. The United States did engage in slavery. It is not fake news, “fake news” being a term coined to accurately describe most of the “alternative facts” coming out of President Donald Trump’s mouth. It is also a phrase that he has unsuccessfully tried to flip and use to describe any any reality involving facts that disagree with what he would like the past to retroactively become.
Tobacco became big business in the 1600s and farmers needed cheap labor for the labor-intensive work. They figured that the only thing better than cheap labor was free labor, and thus the transatlantic slave trade got a whole new life and began an horrific period in American history that traumatized and destroyed millions of lives and whose repercussions and influence continue through today.
How come the United States isn’t part of the United Kingdom?
late-1700s
Britain (part of the United Kingdom) got involved in a super-expensive conflict, the Seven Years War (also known as the French & Indian War). Wars cost a lot of money. To raise more money, Britain raised taxes to ridiculous levels on the colonists living across the Atlantic - and these colonists did not have representation in Parliament. The colonists objected to Britain’s unfair taxation and authoritarian laws and eventually decided to break free in the mid-1770s. They wrote up a declaration of independence, known as the Declaration of Independence, which basically laid out equal rights for all humankind.
The document basically said that as long as you were a white Christian non-slave male who owned property, then you were equal with any other man in the same position and therefore had a number of basic rights. This document went on to inspire other countries to soon rebel in support of basic human equality (see above), most notably France, which did so a decade later in striking and bloody fashion. It may seem ridiculous now that this basic idea of equality applied only to a specific group. But at the time it was revolutionary; the idea that kings and emperors did not have a divine right to rule and therefore dictate and change laws at their pleasure.
Britain (England) wasn’t a fan of this independence idea. They sent an army. There was a war. It was ugly and long. Finally the colonists won. #independence
Are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution the same thing?
No. The Declaration was a universal statement to the world that the colonists were separating themselves from the authority of England and emphasized the idea of basic human equality, as opposed to the divine right of kings to rule.
The Constitution is a complementary document written after the Revolutionary War that laid the blueprint and foundation for how the new government should be set up and how the basic individual rights of every American should be protected.
The first ten amendment to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Super good patriots are protective of all of them and don’t pick and choose which ones are worth protecting and which ones aren’t. I personally am a huge fan of First Amendment protections like the right to free speech and the right to a free press. Most Presidents in our history have been frustrated at these two at some point in their tenure, because they can be very aggravating if you’re in power and people are saying and writing things you don’t like. But most Presidents have accepted that this is part of what makes America a great country.
What’s the big deal about cotton gins?
late-1700s - mid-1800s
The invention of the cotton gin in the late 1700s made cotton farming super profitable. But farm owners still needed labor. More labor. More cheap labor. Or more…free labor. Which meant more slaves. Ick.
Before the cotton gin, slavery was starting to wane. But when the gin came along, there was a huge demand for more more more. This divided the country: the North had slaves, but relatively few in relation to the South. And there was a growing abolitionist movement that believed slavery was a moral evil and therefore had no place in a modern society like the United States.
And there was the South, whose economy was dependent on tobacco and cotton farming, which was driven on the backs of slavery. And as these farms grew, the need for land grew, and…
…both the North and the South began looking West to expand. Both of them were pretty much morally okay with pushing Native Americans out of their lands, but the North wanted to prohibit slavery in any new territories and the South wanted to let each new territory decide for themselves, so…things started to get ugly.
Wait…isn’t the United States, like, a pretty ‘moral nation?’
early- to mid-1800s
Umm, yes, we’d like to think so. And some people make a bunch of money writing books and staying in office and talking about how other people should live super moral lives, and then a lot of times those people are the ones who end up in prison later on for secretly having done a bunch of not-moral stuff. That’s what we call hypocrisy.
The United States was built on the idea of independence and liberty; the freedom for individuals to live their lives without illegitimate interference from the government. That’s what they were fighting for in the Revolutionary War against England.
But as with many revolutionary movements grounded in idealism, once the powerless are in power, they sadly adopt some of the same repressions and oppressions that they once valued. When they refuse to acknowledge that discrepancy, we call it…hypocrisy. So it’s fair to say the U.S. is built on a lot of great ideas. But we have to own up to the fact that historically, the application and execution of those ideologies to all has been inconsistent and…hypocritical. Especially when it comes to slavery and Native Americans.
So this is the deal with Native Americans: in some ways they would have been better off if the British had won. Actually…in many ways they might have been. But that didn’t happen. So when the U.S. finally had its independence, it celebrated this independence by…moving Native Americans off their tribal lands and on to less desirable land. The land they got moved to was pretty decent, even though they had gotten forcibly moved. At least the U.S. government signed treaties with them that guaranteed these lands would remain theirs. Until and unless…
White people might possibly ever need more land. Surprise! Of course they did. And definitely when they found gold on Native lands. At that point it was a no-brainer for the government, especially the government under President Andrew Jackson.
The short version is, they forcibly moved Native Americans to new reservations far away from their homes. Thousands of them died and the journey they made is called The Trail of Tears. For good reason.
That’s awful. Did things start to get better after all the moving and resettling?
mid-1800s
No. Remember that whole slavery thing? Still a big deal going into the mid-1800s. Plantation owners didn’t want to give up their free labor. Slaves didn’t want to be slaves. Some brave people, most notably Harriet Tubman, organized into The Underground Railroad, which was a network of people and homes who helped runaway slaves get to freedom. And freedom had a name: Canada.
If a slave made it to Canada, they were assured of not being returned to plantation slavery.
Meanwhile, a growing number of people in the North called abolitionists were organizing and speaking out against slavery. This was not popular in the South.
So the North and the South argued a bunch?
mid-1800s
Yep. And the arguing turned into war. The Civil War, because the United States was fighting itself. The South wanted to break away so it could do its own thing (mainly slavery) and the North (led by President Lincoln), wanted to do two things:
Keep the United States together (as in: not let the South leave, a process called secession.
Abolish slavery at the federal level so it would not be legal in any state or territory, present or future.
The Civil War was awful. It lasted four years, hundreds of thousands were killed, and in the end the North won and the United States was kept intact. And legalized slavery was ended.
But the effects of the Civil War laid a foundation for regional identities, conflicts, and dynamics that continue to today.
I kind of forgot what happened between the Civil War and World War I. Do you have a really, really short summary?
1866 - 1914
Okay. Well, a lot of stuff. Here’s a partial list:
A bunch of states get added.
Native Americans keep getting moved off their lands.
Immigrants from all over the world keep moving to the U.S.
Civil Rights movements slowly, slowly, slowly, fight for rights for black Americans and others of non-white, non-male, non-native persuasions.
More posts concerning American History below
