Adam Burns is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of American Imperialism (2017) and William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire (2020).

The United States, 1865-1920: Reuniting a Nation explores how the U.S. attempted to heal Civil War-era divisions, as well as maintain and strengthen its unity as new rifts developed in the conflict's aftermath.

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Who's who

PART I ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

1 INTRODUCTION

2 RECONSTRUCTING A NATION

Reconstruction from Lincoln to Johnson

Congressional Reconstruction

Grant's Reconstruction

3 THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION

African American rights secured?

White resistance

Rebuilding a white South

A New South?

4 THE COURSE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION

Connecting the West

Native Americans

Life in the West

5 PARTY POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE

Reestablishing Republican governance

Republican factionalism grows

The Cleveland era

6 ROBBER BARONS AND KNIGHTS OF LABOR

Technology

The robber barons

Agrarian reaction

Urban reaction

7 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

Relations with the European empires

Relations with Latin American nations

Relations with the Asia-Pacific region

8 IMMIGRATION, ETHNICITY, AND THE CHANGING FACE OF THE NATION

Scientific racism

Immigration and new minorities

The growth of black activism

9 BRYAN, ROOSEVELT, AND THE EVOLUTION OF PARTY POLITICS

Populism and the rise of William Jennings Bryan

The progressive movement

Theodore Roosevelt: the accidental president

Taft and the Republican split of 1912

10 WILSON AND THE GREAT WAR

The New Freedom: domestic affairs before the war

Wilson, Latin America, and neutrality

The end of neutrality and peace without victory

The home front

11 CONCLUSION: THE ELECTION OF 1920 AND THE END OF AN ERA

PART II DOCUMENTS

1 Abraham Lincoln - "The Gettysburg Address" (1863)

2 Frederick Douglass - "What the Black Man Wants" (1865)

3 Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1868)

4 Andrew Johnson - Veto Message Regarding Rebel State Governments (1867)

5 "Civil Rights of Freedmen in Mississippi" (1865)

6 Tom Watson - "The Negro Question in the South" (1892)

7 Booker T. Washington - "Atlanta Compromise" Speech (1895)

8 Sitting Bull - Testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee (1883)

9 Frederick Jackson Turner - "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)

10 Rutherford B. Hayes - Presidential Inaugural Address (1877)

11 "To Republicans and Independent Voters" (1884)

12 Populist Party Platform (1892)

13 Andrew Carnegie - "Wealth" (1889)

14 Samuel Gompers - Testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor (1883)

15 Theodore Roosevelt - Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904)

16 John Hay - The First "Open Door" Note (1899)

17 Philippine Declaration of Independence (1898)

18 Thomas Dixon - The Leopard's Spots (1902)

19 Reports of the Dillingham Immigration Committee (1910)

20 W. E. B. Du Bois - "The Talented Tenth" (1903)

21 William Jennings Bryan - "Cross of Gold" Speech (1896)

22 Theodore Roosevelt - "The Man with the Muck-rake" (1906)

23 Woodrow Wilson - Address to Congress Leading to a War against Germany (1917)

24 Carrie Chapman Catt - Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment (1917)

Glossary

Guide to further reading

References

Index