Chapter 21: Chapter Outline

The following annotated chapter outline will help you review the major topics covered in this chapter.

Instructions: Review the outline to recall events and their relationships as presented in the chapter. Return to skim any sections that seem unfamiliar.

I. From Expansion to Imperialism

     A. Foundations of Empire

 1. By 1918, at the end of World War I, European nations’ grip on their colonial empires was weakening. The United States ceased
     acquiring overseas territories and pursued a different path. It developed a more "informal empire," based on business interests rather
     than administrative control. President Woodrow Wilson believed the United States should steer a middle course between revolutionary
     socialism and European-style imperialism, the exercise of military, political, and economic power overseas.

 2. Historians used to describe turn-of-the-century U.S. imperialism as something new. Now they emphasize continuities between foreign
     policy in this era and the nation’s relentless earlier expansion across the continent. Wars against native peoples had occurred almost
     continuously since the nation’s founding; in the 1840s, the United States had taken one-third of Mexico .

 3. But policymakers beginning in the 1890s went on a determined quest for global markets. Industrialization and a modern navy provided
     tools for the United States to flex its muscle, and the economic crisis of the 1890s provided a spur.

 4. Confronting high unemployment and mass protests, policymakers feared that American workers would embrace socialism or communism.
     The alternative, they believed, was overseas markets that would create jobs and prosperity at home.

 5. Intellectual trends also favored imperialism. As early as 1885, in his popular book Our Country, Congregationalist minister Josiah Strong
     urged Protestants to proselytize overseas. He predicted that American "Anglo-Saxons"—"the representative, let us hope, of the largest
     liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization, having developed particularly aggressive traits calculated to impress its
     institutions upon mankind"—would "spread itself over the earth." Such arguments were grounded in American exceptionalism, the
     idea that the United States had a unique destiny to foster democracy and civilization.

 6. Fear of ruthless competition drove the United States , like European nations, to invest in the latest weapons. American policymakers
     saw that the European powers were busily carving up Africa and Asia among themselves, while embarking on an arms race to build
     steel-plated battleships. In his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), U.S. naval officer Alfred T. Mahan urged the
     United States to enter the fray, observing that naval power had been essential to the growth of past empires. In 1890, Congress
     appropriated funds for three battleships. President Grover Cleveland continued this naval program.

     B. The War of 1898

 1. In February 1895, Cuban patriots mounted a major guerrilla war against Spain , which had lost most of its New World territories but
     managed to hold onto the island. The Spanish commander responded by rounding up civilians into concentration camps, where as many
     as 200,000 Cubans died of starvation, exposure, or dysentery.

 2. In the United States , William Randolph Hearst turned their plight into a cause célèbre. Hearst’s campaign fed a surge of nationalism,
     especially among those who feared that American men were losing strength and courage amid the conditions of industrial society.

 3. President Cleveland had no interest in supporting the Cuban rebellion, but he worried over Spain ’s failure to end it. The war was
     disrupting trade and damaging American-owned sugar plantations on the island. An unstable Cuba was incompatible with America ’s
     strategic interests, especially a proposed canal whose Caribbean approaches would have to be safeguarded.

 4. Taking office in 1897, McKinley was inclined to take a tougher stance. In September, the U.S. minister in Madrid informed Spain that it
     must ensure an "early and certain peace," or the United States would step in. At first, this hard line seemed to work: Spain ’s
     conservative regime fell and a liberal government, taking office in October 1897, offered Cuba limited self-rule. But Spanish loyalists in
     Havana rioted against the proposal, while Cuban rebels held out for full independence.

 5. On February 9, 1898, Hearst’s New York Journal published a private letter by Dupuy de Lôme, Spanish minister to the United States , in
     which he belittled the McKinley administration. De Lôme resigned, but exposure of the letter intensified Americans’ indignation against
     Spain . The next week brought shocking news: the U.S. battle cruiser Maine had exploded and sunk in Havana harbor, with 260 seamen
     lost.

 6. Hesitant business leaders now became impatient, believing war was preferable to an unending Cuban crisis. On March 27, McKinley
     cabled an ultimatum to Madrid: immediate armistice for six months and, with the United States as mediator, peace negotiations with
     the rebels. Spain , though desperate to avoid war, balked at McKinley’s added demand that mediation had to result in Cuban
     independence. On April 11, McKinley asked Congress for authority to intervene in Cuba .

 7. Historians long referred to the ensuing conflict as the Spanish-American War, but that name ignores the central role of the Cuban
     revolutionaries, who had started the conflict and hoped to achieve national independence. Thus, many historians now call it the War of
     1898.

 8. On April 24, 1898, Spain declared war on the United States . Across the country, regiments formed. Theodore Roosevelt accepted a
     commission as lieutenant colonel of a cavalry regiment.

 9. The decisive engagement of the war took place in the Pacific. This was the handiwork of Theodore Roosevelt, who, while still in the
     Navy Department, had gotten intrepid Commodore George
     Dewey appointed commander of the Pacific fleet. In the event of war, Dewey had instructions to sail immediately for the
     Spanish-owned Philippines . When war was declared, Roosevelt confronted his surprised superior and pressured him into validating
     Dewey’s instructions. On May 1, 1898, American ships cornered the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and destroyed it. Manila, the Philippine
     capital, fell on August 13.

10. Nominally an independent nation, Hawaii had long been under American dominance, since its climate had attracted a horde of American
     sugarcane planters. An 1876 treaty between the United States and the island’s monarch gave Hawaiian sugar tariff-free access to the
     American market, with Hawaii pledging to sign no such agreement with any other power. In 1887, Hawaii also granted a long-coveted
     lease for a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

11. When Hawaii’s access to the U.S. market was canceled by a new tariff in 1890, sugar planters revolted against Hawaii’s Queen
     Liliuokalani and negotiated a treaty of annexation. Grover Cleveland rejected the treaty when he entered office, declaring that it would
     violate America ’s "unbroken tradition" against acquiring territory overseas. Congress authorized the annexation of Hawaii in July 1898.

12. In Cuba , Spanish forces were depleted by the long guerrilla war. Though poorly trained and equipped, American forces had the
     advantages of a demoralized foe and knowledgeable Cuban allies.

13. On July 3, the Spanish fleet in Santiago harbor tried a desperate run through the American blockade and was destroyed. Days later,
     Spanish forces surrendered. American combat casualties had been few; most deaths had resulted from malaria and yellow fever.

     C. The Spoils of War

 1. The United States and Spain quickly signed an armistice in which Spain agreed to liberate Cuba and cede Puerto Rico and Guam to the
     United States . But what would the United States do with the Philippines , an immense archipelago that lay over 5,000 miles from
     California?

 2. Initially, the United States aimed to keep only Manila, because of its fine harbor. Manila was not defensible, however, without the
     whole of Luzon, the large island on which the city was located. After some deliberation, McKinley found a justification for annexing the
     whole Philippines . He decided that "we could not leave [the Filipinos] to themselves—they were unfit for self-rule."

 3. Leading citizens, including Jane Addams, Mark Twain, and other peace advocates, enlisted in the anti‑imperialist cause. Steel king
     Andrew Carnegie offered $20 million to purchase Philippine independence. Labor leader Samuel Gompers warned union members about
     the threat of competition from cheap Filipino labor.

 4. Anti-imperialists, however, were a diverse lot. Some argued that Filipinos and Hawaiians were perfectly capable of self-rule; others
     warned about the dangers of annexing 8 million Filipinos of an "inferior race."

 5. In the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States for a payment of $20 million. But annexation was not as simple
     as U.S. policymakers had expected.

 6. On February 4, 1899—two days before the Senate ratified the treaty—fighting broke out between American and Filipino patrols on the
     edge of Manila. Confronted by annexation, rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo asserted his nation’s independence and turned his guns on
     occupying American forces. TThe ensuing conflict far exceeded in length and ferocity the war just concluded with Spain .

 7. Fighting tenacious guerrillas, the U.S. Army resorted to the same tactics Spain had employed in Cuba : burning crops and villages and
     rounding up civilians. Atrocities became commonplace on both sides. In three years of warfare, 4,200 Americans and an estimated
     200,000 Filipinos died; many of the latter included dislocated civilians, particularly children, who succumbed to malnutrition and disease.

 8. The treaty, while guaranteeing freedom of religion to inhabitants of ceded Spanish territories, withheld any promise of citizenship. It
     was up to Congress to decide their "civil rights and political status."

 9. In 1901, the Supreme Court upheld this provision in a set of decisions known as the Insular Cases. The Constitution, declared the
     Court, did not automatically extend citizenship to people in acquired territories; Congress could decide. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the
     Philippines were thus marked as colonies, not future states.

10. In accordance with a special commission set up by McKinley, the Jones Act of 1916 eventually committed the United States to
     Philippine independence but set no date. (The Philippines later achieved independence in 1946.)

II. A Power Among Powers

     A. The Open Door in Asia

 1. American policymakers and business leaders had a burning interest in East Asian markets, but they were entering a crowded field. In
     the late 1890s, following Japan ’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Japan , Russia , Germany , France , and Britain
     divided coastal China into spheres of influence. Fearful of being shut out, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay in 1899 sent these powers
     a note claiming the right of equal trade access—an "open door"—for all nations seeking to do business in China .

 2. When a secret society of Chinese nationalists, known outside China as "Boxers," rebelled against foreign occupation in 1900, the
     United States sent 5,000 troops to join a multinational campaign to break the Boxers’ siege of European government offices in Beijing.

 3. In these years, Europe and the United Sates were startled by an unexpected development: Japan was emerging as East Asia’s
     dominant power. A decade after its victory over China in 1895, Japan responded to Russian rivalry for control of both the Korean
     peninsula and Manchuria, in northern China , by attacking the czar’s fleet at Russia ’s leased Chinese port. In a series of brilliant
     victories, the Japanese smashed the Russian forces. Roosevelt mediated a settlement in 1905.

 4. Contemptuous of other Asians, Roosevelt respected the Japanese, whom he called "a wonderful and civilized people." More importantly,
     he saw Japan ’s rising military might. In 1908, the United States and Japan signed the Root-Takahira Agreement, confirming principles
     of free oceanic commerce and recognizing Japan ’s authority over Manchuria.

 5. William Howard Taft entered the White House in 1909 convinced that the United States had been short-changed in Asia. He pressed for
     a larger role for American investors, especially in Chinese railroad construction. Eager to promote U.S. business interests abroad, he
     hoped that infusions of American capital would offset Japanese power.

 6. When the Chinese Revolution of 1911 toppled the Manchu dynasty, Taft supported the victorious Nationalists, who wanted to
     modernize their country and liberate it from Japanese domination. The United States had entangled itself in China and entered a
     long-term rivalry with Japan for power in the Pacific, a competition that would culminate thirty years later in World War II.

     B. The United States in the Caribbean

 1. Closer to home, European powers conceded Roosevelt’s argument that the United States had a "paramount interest" in the Caribbean.

 2. In 1900, the United States consulted with
     Britain on building a canal across Central America. In the Hay‑Pauncefote Treaty (1901), Britain recognized the United States ’ sole
     right to build and fortify a Central American canal.

 3. In facing rivals, Roosevelt famously argued that the United States should "speak softly and carry a big stick." By "big stick" he meant,
     most of all, naval power, and rapid access to two oceans required a canal.

 4. Freed by Britain ’s surrender of canal rights, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to authorize $10 million, plus future payments of $250,000
     per year, to purchase from Colombia a six-mile strip of land across Panama , a Colombian province.

 5. Furious when Colombia rejected this proposal, Roosevelt contemplated outright seizure of Panama but settled on a more roundabout
     solution. Panamanians, long separated from Colombia by miles of remote jungle, chafed under Colombian rule. The United States lent
     covert assistance to an independence movement, triggering a bloodless revolution.

 6. On November 6, 1903, the United States recognized the new nation of Panama ; two weeks later, it obtained a perpetually renewable
     lease on a canal zone. Roosevelt never regretted the venture, though in 1922 the United States paid Colombia $25 million as a kind of
     conscience money.

 7. Roosevelt was already working in other ways to strengthen U.S. control of the Caribbean. As a condition for its withdrawal from the
     island in 1902, the United States forced Cuba to accept a proviso in its constitution called the Platt Amendment, which blocked Cuba
     from making a treaty with any country except the United States and gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs if it
     saw fit. Cuba also granted the United States a lease on Guantánamo (still in effect), where the U.S. Navy built a large base.

 8. Claiming that instability invited European intervention, Roosevelt announced in 1904 that the United States would police all parts of the
     Caribbean. This so-called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine actually turned that doctrine upside down: instead of
     guaranteeing that the United States would protect its Latin American neighbors from European powers and help to preserve their
     independence, it asserted the United States’ unrestricted right to regulate Caribbean affairs. The Roosevelt Corollary was not a treaty;
     it was a unilateral declaration sanctioned only by America ’s military and economic might. Citing the Corollary, the United States
     intervened regularly in Caribbean states over the next three decades.

     C. Wilson and Mexico

 1. Since the 1870s, Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz had created a friendly climate for American investors who purchased railroads,
     plantations, mines, and much-coveted oil fields. By the early 1900s, however, he feared the extraordinary power of these economic
     interests and began to nationalize—reclaim—key resources.

 2. Powerful American investors, who faced the loss of their Mexican holdings, began to back Francisco Madero, an advocate of
     constitutional government who was friendlier to U.S. interests.

 3. In 1911, Madero forced Díaz to resign and proclaimed himself president. But his position was weak. In February 1913, Madero was
     deposed and murdered by a leading general, Victoriano Huerta.

 4. The Wilson administration became increasingly fearful that the revolution threatened U.S. interests. Over the strong protests of
     Venustiano Carranza, the Mexican leader whom Wilson most favored, the United States threw its own forces into the emerging
     Mexican Revolution.

 5. On the pretext of a minor insult to the U.S. Navy, Wilson ordered U.S. occupation of the port of Veracruz on April 21, 1914, at the cost
     of nineteen American and 126 Mexican lives.

 6. The Huerta regime crumbled. Carranza’s forces, after nearly engaging the Americans themselves, entered Mexico City in triumph in
     August 1914. But Wilson’s heavy-handed military interference caused lasting mistrust.

 7. Carranza’s victory did not subdue all revolutionary activity. In 1916, General Pancho Villa stirred up trouble on the U.S.-Mexico border,
     killing sixteen American civilians and raiding the town of Columbus, New Mexico.

 8. Wilson sent 11,000 troops under General John J. Pershing across the border after Villa. Soon Pershing’s force resembled an army of
     occupation. Mexican public opinion demanded withdrawal, and armed clashes broke out between U.S. and Mexican troops. At the brink
     of war, both governments backed off, and U.S. forces withdrew.

 9. The following year, Carranza’s government finally received official recognition from Washington. But U.S. policymakers had shown their
     intention to police not only the Caribbean and Central America, but also Mexico when they deemed it necessary.

III. The United States in World War I

     A. The Great War, 1914–1917

 1. While competing imperial claims fostered conflicts around the globe, a war of unprecedented scale was brewing in Europe.

 2. Germany , a rising power, had humiliated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; its subsequent military build-up terrified its
     neighbors. To the east, the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating and losing its grip on the Balkans, while European powers jockeyed to
     claim and defend colonies in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

 3. Out of these conflicts, two rival power blocs emerged: the Triple Alliance ( Germany , Austria-Hungary , and Italy ), and the Triple
     Entente ( Britain , France, and Russia ). Within each alliance, national governments pursued their own interests but were bound to one
     another by public and secret treaties.

 4. The spark that ignited World War I came in the Balkans, where Austria-Hungary and Russia competed for control.

 5. Austria ’s 1908 seizure of the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina , with their substantial Slavic populations, angered Russia
     and its ally, the independent Slavic state of Serbia . In response, Serbian revolutionaries recruited Bosnian Slavs, including university
     student Gavrilo Princip, to resist Austrian rule.

 6. In June 1914, in the town of Sarajevo, Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

 7. Like dominos falling, the system of European alliances rapidly pushed all the powers into war.

 8. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination and declared war on July 28. Russia , tied by secret treaty to Serbia , mobilized its
     armies against Austria-Hungary . Russia ’s move prompted Germany to declare war on Russia and its ally, France. As a preparation for
     attacking France , Germany launched a brutal invasion of the neutral country of Belgium , which caused Great Britain to declare war on
     Germany .

 9. By August 4, most of Europe was at war. The Allies— Great Britain , France ,
     and Russia —confronted the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary , joined in November by the Ottoman Empire.

10. Two major war zones emerged. Germany battled the British and French (and later Americans) on the Western Front. Assisted by
     Austrians and Hungarians, Germany also fought Russia on the Eastern Front.

11. Because most of the warring nations held colonial empires, the conflict spread to the Middle East, Africa, and China , throwing the
      future of those areas into question.

12. Hoping to secure valuable colonies, Italy and Japan soon joined the Allied side, while Bulgaria linked up with the Central Powers.

13. For four bloody years, millions of soldiers fought a war of attrition in heavily fortified trenches that cut across a narrow swath of
     Belgium and northeastern France . Soldiers hunkered in wet trenches for months on end. One side and then the other would mount
     attacks across "no man’s land," only to be mangled by barbed wire or mowed down by machine guns.

14. Struggling to break the stalemate, Germany launched an attack at Ypres in April 1915 that introduced a new nightmare: poison gas.

15. As the Germans tried to break through French lines at Verdun between February and December 1916, they suffered 450,000 casualties.
     The French fared even worse, with 550,000 dead or wounded soldiers. It was all to no avail. From 1914 to 1918, the Western Front
     barely moved.

B. From Neutrality to War

 1. At the outbreak of war, Wilson called on Americans to be "neutral in fact as well as in name, impartial in thought as well as in action."
     If he kept the United States out of the conflict, Wilson reasoned, he could influence the postwar settlement, much as President
     Theodore Roosevelt had helped arbitrate the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

 2. Even if Wilson had wanted to unite Americans behind the Allies, that would have been nearly impossible in 1914. Many Irish Americans
     viewed Britain as an enemy, resenting its continued occupation of Ireland . Millions of German Americans maintained ties to their
     homeland.

 3. Progressive-minded Republicans such as Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin vehemently opposed taking sides in a European fight,
     as did Socialists who condemned the war as a conflict among greedy capitalist and imperialist nations.

 4. Two giants of American industry, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, opposed the war. In December 1915, Ford sent a hundred men and
     women to Europe on a "peace ship" to urge an end to the conflict.

 5. The United States wished to trade with all the warring nations, but this proved impossible. In September 1914, the British imposed a
     naval blockade on the Central Powers to cut off vital supplies of food and military equipment.

 6. The Wilson administration protested this infringement of the rights of neutral carriers but did not take action. An imbalance in trade
     favoring Britain over Germany undercut U.S. neutrality, tying America ’s economic health to Allied victory. If Germany won and Britain
     and France defaulted on their debts, American companies would suffer catastrophic losses.

 7. To challenge the British navy, Germany launched a devastating new weapon, the U-boat, or submarine.

 8. In April 1915, the German embassy in Washington issued a warning that all ships flying the flags of Britain or its allies were liable to
     destruction. A few weeks later, a U-boat off the coast of Ireland torpedoed the British luxury liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 people,
     including 128 Americans.

 9. The attack on the passenger ship incensed Americans. President Wilson sent strongly worded protests to Germany , but tensions
     subsided by September when Germany announced that U-boats would no longer attack passenger vessels without warning.

10. Nonetheless, the Lusitania crisis prompted Wilson to reconsider his options. He quietly tried to mediate an end to the European conflict.
     Finding neither side seriously interested in peace, Wilson endorsed a $1 billion buildup of the U.S. Army and Navy in the Fall of 1915.

11. Despite Wilson’s campaign slogan, events pushed him toward war. On February 1, 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine
     warfare, a decision dictated by the impasse on the Western Front. In response, Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany .

12. A few weeks later, newspapers published an intercepted dispatch from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to his
     minister in Mexico City. The note urged Mexico to join the Central Powers; Zimmermann promised that if the United States entered the
     war, Germany would help Mexico recover "the lost territory of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona."

13. With Pancho Villa’s border raids still fresh in the public mind, the Mexico-Germany threat jolted American opinion. Meanwhile,
     German U-boats attacked American ships without warning, sinking three on March 18 alone.

14. On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war. Reflecting his Protestant zeal and progressive idealism, Wilson
     promised that American involvement would make the world "safe for democracy."

15. On April 6, the United States declared war on Germany . Reflecting the nation’s divided views, the vote was far from unanimous. Six
     senators and fifty members of the House voted against entry, including Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman
     elected to Congress.

     C. "Over There"

 1. In 1917, the U.S. army numbered fewer than 200,000 soldiers. To field a fighting force, Congress instituted a military draft in May 1917.

 2. President Wilson chose General Pershing to head the American Expeditionary Force (AEF).

 3. When the United States entered the war, German U-boats were sinking 900,000 tons of Allied ships each month. By sending merchant
     and troop ships in armed convoys, the U.S. Navy cut that monthly rate to 400,000 tons by the end of 1917.

 4. With trench warfare grinding on, Allied commanders pleaded for American soldiers to fill their depleted units, but Pershing waited until
     the AEF reached full strength.

 5. Peace with Russia freed Germany to launch a major offensive on the Western Front. By May 1918, German troops advanced to within
     50 miles of Paris.

 6. As Allied leaders called desperately for U.S. troops, Pershing finally committed about 60,000 men to help the French in the battles of
     Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood.

 7. With American soldiers arriving in massive numbers, Allied forces brought the German offensive to a halt in July; by September, they
     forced a German retreat.

 8. Then Pershing pitted over 1 million American soldiers against an outnumbered and exhausted German army in the Argonne forest. By
     early November, this attack had broken the German defense of a crucial rail hub at Sedan. The cost was high: 26,000 Americans killed
     and 95,000 wounded.

 9. The flood of American troops and supplies across the Atlantic turned the tide. Recognizing the inevitability of defeat and facing popular
     uprisings at home, the German government signed an armistice on November 11, 1918. The Great War was over.

10. By the end of World War I, almost 4 million American men—popularly known as "doughboys"—wore U.S. uniforms, as did several
     thousand female nurses.

11. The recruits reflected America ’s heterogeneity: one-fifth had been born outside the United States , and soldiers spoke forty-nine
     different languages.

12. Over 400,000 African American men enlisted, accounting for 13 percent of the armed forces. Their wartime experiences were often
     grim. They served in segregated units and were given the most menial tasks. Racial discrimination disrupted military efficiency and
     erupted in violence at several camps.

13. About two-thirds of American soldiers in France saw military action, but most escaped the horrors of sustained trench warfare.

14. During the brief period of American participation, 53,000 servicemen died in action. Another 63,000 died from disease, mainly the
     devastating influenza pandemic that began early in 1918 and, over the next two years, killed 50 million people throughout the world.

15. The nation’s military deaths, though substantial, were a mere speck compared to the 500,000 American civilians who died of this
     terrible flu—not to mention the 8 million soldiers lost by the Allies and Central Powers.

     D. War on the Home Front

 1. American businesses made big bucks from World War I. As grain, weapons, and manufactured goods flowed to Britain and France , the
     United States became a creditor nation. Moreover, as the war drained British financial reserves, U.S. banks provided capital for
     investments around the globe. At the same time, government powers expanded, with new federal agencies overseeing almost every
     part of the economy.

 2. The War Industries Board (WIB), established in July 1917, directed military production. The WIB allocated scarce resources among
     industries, ordered factories to convert to war production, set prices, and standardized procedures.

 3. During the war, suppressing dissent became a near obsession for President Wilson. In April 1917, Wilson formed the Committee on Public
     Information (CPI), a government propaganda agency headed by journalist George Creel. The committee set out to mold Americans into
     "one white-hot mass" of war patriotism. The CPI touched the lives of practically every civilian. It distributed 75 million pieces of
     literature and enlisted thousands of volunteers to deliver short pro-war speeches at movie theaters.

 4. During the war, Congress passed two new laws to curb dissent. The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed stiff penalties for antiwar
     activities. The Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited any words or behavior that might "incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the
     United States , or promote the cause of its enemies." Because these acts defined treason and sedition loosely, they led to the
     conviction of more than a thousand people.

 5. In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a socialist who was jailed for circulating pamphlets
     that urged army draftees to resist induction. The justices followed this with a similar decision in Abrams v. United States (1919),
     stating that authorities could prosecute speech that they believed to pose "a clear and present danger to the safety of the country."

 6. World War I created new economic opportunities at home. Jobs in war industries drew thousands of people to the cities, including
     immigrants.

 7. For the first time, with so many men in uniform, jobs in heavy industry opened to African Americans. Well before the war, some
     southern blacks had moved to the North; wartime jobs accelerated the pace.

 8. During World War I, more than 400,000 African Americans moved to such cities as St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Detroit, in what
     became known as the Great Migration.

 9. Wartime labor shortages also prompted Mexican Americans in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to leave farm labor for
     industrial jobs in rapidly growing southwestern cities. Thousands of Mexicans also entered the United States as a result of displacement
     from the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917.

10. Women were the largest group to take advantage of wartime employment opportunities. About 1 million women joined the paid labor
     force for the first time, while another 8 million gave up low-wage service jobs for higher-paying industrial work.

     E. Women’s Voting Rights

 1. One of World War I’s positive legacies was women’s suffrage. When the United States entered the war, the National American Woman
     Suffrage Association (NAWSA) threw the support of its 2 million members behind Wilson.

 2. NAWSA women in thousands of communities promoted food conservation, aided war workers, and distributed emergency relief through
     organizations such as the Red Cross.

 3. Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party (NWP) took a more confrontational strategy. As a lobbyist for NAWSA, Paul found her cause
     dismissed by congressmen, and in 1916 she founded the NWP.

 4. Inspired by militant British suffragists, the party began picketing the White House in July 1917. Paul and other NWP activists faced
     arrest for "obstructing traffic" and were sentenced to seven months in jail. They protested by going on a hunger strike, which prison
     authorities met with forced feeding. Public shock at the women’s treatment put pressure on Wilson and drew attention to the suffrage
     cause.

 5. Impressed by NAWSA’s patriotism and also worried by the NWP’s militancy, the anti-suffrage Wilson reversed his position. In January
     1918, he urged support for woman suffrage as a "war measure."

 6. The constitutional amendment quickly passed the House of Representatives; it took eighteen months to get through the Senate and
     another year to win ratification by the states. On August 26, 1920, Tennessee gave the Nineteenth Amendment the last vote it
     needed.

IV. The Treaty of Versailles

     A. The Fate of Wilson’s Ideas

 1. In January 1917, the idealistic Wilson had proposed "peace without victory," arguing that only "peace among equals" could last. Having
     achieved victory at an incredible price, Britain and France showed absolutely no interest in such a plan.

 2. But the war’s horrors had created popular pressure for an outcome that was just and enduring. Wilson scored a diplomatic victory in
     January 1919 when the Allies accepted his Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiations.

 3. The Points embodied one important strand in American progressivism. They called for open diplomacy, "absolute freedom of navigation
     upon the seas," arms reduction, removal of trade barriers, and national self-determination for peoples in the Austro-Hungarian, Russian,
     and German empires.

 4. Essential to Wilson’s vision was the founding of a League of Nations that would guarantee "independence and territorial integrity to
     great and small States alike." Acting as an international regulatory body, the League would mediate disputes, supervise arms reduction,
     and—according to the crucial Article X of its covenant—curb aggressor nations through collective military action. Wilson hoped the
     League would "end all wars."

 5. The three European Allied leaders—Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and Prime
     Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy—wanted to punish Germany for World War I. Their plan for doing so had disastrous consequences.
     First, they forced Germany to pay $33 billion in reparations and give up coal supplies, merchant ships, valuable patents, and even part
     of its territory along the French border.

 6. These requirements caused keen resentment and economic hardship in Germany , and over the following two decades they helped lead
     to World War II.

 7. Wilson had less success in other areas in persuading the Allies to adopt his Fourteen Points. The Allies dismantled the Central Powers’
     colonial empires but did not create independent states; instead, they assigned colonies to themselves to administer as "mandates."

 8. Japan took Germany ’s possessions in East Asia; France kept Indochina. Because the war finished off the Ottoman Empire, France and
     England laid claim to Ottoman and German colonies in Africa and the Middle East.

 9. Given these results, the Versailles treaty must be judged one of history’s greatest catastrophes. In Europe itself, as well as places as
     far-flung as Palestine and Indochina, it created the conditions for horrific future bloodshed.

10. Wilson hoped the new League of Nations, authorized by the treaty, would moderate the terms of the settlement and secure a peaceful
     resolution of other disputes. For this to occur, American participation in the League was crucial. So the president set out to persuade
     the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

     B. Congress Rejects the Treaty

 1. Though major opinion makers and religious denominations supported the treaty, the Republican Party was openly hostile, and it held a
     majority in the Senate.

 2. One group, called the "irreconcilables," consisted of western Republicans such as Hiram Johnson of California and Robert La Follette of
     Wisconsin, who opposed U.S. involvement in European affairs.

 3. Another group of Republicans, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, worried that Article X—the provision for collective
     security—would prevent the United States from pursuing an independent foreign policy.

 4. To mobilize support for the treaty, the president embarked on an exhausting speaking tour. In Pueblo, Colorado, in September 1919,
     Wilson collapsed. A week later, back in Washington, he suffered a severe stroke that left one side of his body paralyzed. Wilson still
     urged Democratic senators to reject all Republican amendments.

 5. When the treaty came up for a vote in November 1919, it failed to win the required two-thirds majority; a second attempt, in March
     1920, fell seven votes short.

 6. The treaty was dead, and so was Wilson’s leadership. The president never fully recovered from his stroke. The United States never
     ratified the Versailles treaty or joined the League of Nations. In turn, the weak League failed to do what Wilson had hoped. When
     Wilson died in 1924, his dream of a just and peaceful international order lay in ruins.