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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Postwar America

THE TRUMAN YEARS: THE FAIR DEAL (1945-1953)

1945	I was all right. My problem was to make people I met feel at ease. I just acted myself and didn’t sulk in corners hiding the hooks. When my neighborhood friends saw I was okay and laughing they said to themselves, “Why should we feel sorry for him? He’s getting along better than we are.” ''Harold Russell, a paratrooper sergeant who lost both hands in a grenade explosion and was fitted with hooks for artificial hands. Quoted in Life Magazine (December 16, 1946). He appeared in The Best Years of Our Lives, a film about war veterans adjusting to returning home after the war; he won an Academy Award for best supporting actor.'' 1946	Had enough? Republican campaign slogan in the congressional elections of 1946, which resulted in Republicans winning control of both houses of Congress.

1948	Mr. Dewey is clearly so far ahead that we might just as well get ready to listen to his inaugural. One pollster’s assessment of the 1848 presidential election, predicting victory for New York’s Republican Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

1948	Dewey Defeats Truman Mistaken Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper headline the day after the election in which President Truman defeated Dewey.

1948	Every segment of our population... has a right to expect from our government a fair deal. President Truman, in his State of the Union message to Congress in 1949, after his electoral victory of 1948, asking for new reforms to build on FDR’s New Deal.

THE EISENHOWER YEARS (1953-1961)

1953	This a new kind of capitalism: capitalism for the many, not for the few. Economic policy of the Republicans, according to The Reader’s Digest.

1954	Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.... Have you left no sense of decency? ''Attorney Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was both merciless and reckless in hunting out Communist sympathizers in the United States Government. Documents from the former Soviet Union, however, seem to show that McCarthy claim of Communist infiltration was accurate.''

1955	I feel pretty good when I’m attacked from both sides. It makes me more certain that I’m on the right track. President Eisenhower.

1958	The missile took off in a beautiful launching. It rose slowly at first in a huge splash of flame with a roar that could be heard for miles.... 	Associate Press account of the launch of the Explorer satellite, America’s first earth satellite (January 1958).

CIVIL RIGHTS

1947	Jack knew that by breaking the color barrier, he was not only paving the way for minorities in professional sports, but was also providing opportunities in all facets of life. Rachel Robinson, remember her husband, Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in the major leagues in modern times when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

1947	I think the start of the heavy civil rights movement came with the breaking of the color barrier in major league baseball. It was one of the greatest indications of the impetus of the civil rights movement in the United States. To me, it really was the start. It showed a lot of folks that, here was the concept of equality. It nailed many nails in the coffin, particularly in terms of the perception of inferiority. Jackie Robinson was a pioneer. He had to stand there and take it, just so others could maybe someday get where he was. Federal Judge David Hittner.

1948	We shall not... finally achieve the ideals for which this nation was founded so long as any American suffers discrimination as a result of his race, or religion, or color, or the land of origin of his forefathers. President Truman, message to Congress (1948).

1954	A feeling of inferiority... that may affect [children’s] hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.... In the field of education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Brown v. Board of Topeka Education, the Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation is schools unconstitutional, reversing its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which approved the “separate but equal” doctrine.

1955	The driver of the bus saw me still sitting there, and he asked was I going to stand up. I said, “No.” He said, “Well, I’m going to have you arrested.” Then I said, “You may do that.”... I had been pushed as far as I could stand. Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up a seat on a bus on December 1, 1955 brought on the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott.

1955	If Negroes do not ride the buses, they could not operate. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial [of Rosa Parks]. Statement of African American churches in Montgomery, starting the bus boycott.

1955	My feets is tired, but my soul is rested. ''An elderly woman, participating in the Montgomery bus boycott. Her words became the motto of the boycott, which began on December 5, 1955. The United States Supreme Court ruled in November 1956 that the law enforcing segregation on the bus lines was unconstitutional. The boycott ended on December 21, 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., boarded a bus in Montgomery and sat in the front seat.'' 1955	We’re here because, first and foremost, we are American citizens, and we are determined to acquire our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. We are tired — tired of being segregated and humiliated, tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.... You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression... We are determined here in Montgomery... to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream! Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., speech on December 2, 1955, during the Montgomery bus boycott.

1956	NOTICE It is required by law under penalty of fine of $5.00 to $25.00 that White and Negro passengers must occupy the respective space or seats indicated by signs in this vehicle. Texas Penal Code; Article 1659, Sec. A, Dallas City Ordinance No. 7304. Sign in public buses in Dallas, Texas, removed in response to a court ruling in 1956.

1957	No matter how great the obstacles and suffering, we urge all Negroes to reject segregation. But far beyond this, we call upon them to... understand that nonviolence is not a symbol of weakness or cowardice, but as Jesus demonstrated, non-violent resistance transforms weakness into strength and breeds courage in the face of danger. ''“A Statement to the South and to the Nation,” (January 10-11, 1957) issued by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which founded by almost 100 black ministers after the Montgomery boycott. The SCLC elected Dr. King, who had studied the nonviolent resistance of Mohandas Gandhi of India, as its president.''

1957	It will not be possible to restore or to maintain order... if forcible integration is carried out tomorrow in the schools of this community. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who opposed the admission of nine black students to Central High School in Little Rock (September 1957) and ordered the state’s National Guard to prevent integration, in defiance of an order from a Federal Court.

1957	In any area where the federal government has assumed jurisdiction and this is upheld by the Supreme Court, there can be only one outcome: the state will lose. 	President Eisenhower to Governor Faubus, in Eisenhower’s memoir, Waging Peace.

1957	I tried to find a friendly face somewhere in the mob.... [A white girl] spat on me.... I saw a bench at the bus stop. When I got there, I don’t think I could have gone another step. I sat down and the mob crowded up and began shouting all over again. Just then a white man sat down beside me, put his arm around me and patted my shoulder. He raised my chin and said, “Don’t let them see you cry.” Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine African American students attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock.

1957	The immediate need for federal troops is urgent.... People are converging on the scene from all directions and engaging in fisticuffs and other acts of violence. Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob. Telegram from Mayor Mann of Little Rock to President Eisenhower on September 24, 1957.

1957 		The situation in Little Rock situation — rebellion, the breaking of a federal law, and the flouting of federal court orders by some who were sworn to uphold the law --... could lead to a breakdown of law and order in a widening area. And around the world it would continue to feed the mill of Soviet propagandists who by word and picture were telling the world of the “racial terror” in the United States. President Eisenhower, in Waging Peace, on his decision on September 24 to send units of the 101 Airborne Division to ensure the integration of Central High School the next day.

1962	[The voting official] brought a big rule book out there, and he gave me the sixteenth section of the Constitution of Mississippi, and that was dealing with de facto laws, and I didn’t know nothin’ about no de facto laws.... I could copy it like it was in the book, but after I got through copying it, he told me to give a reasonable interpretation and tell the meaning of that section that I had copied. Well, I flunked out.... So then we started back to Ruleville.... [O]n our way back... [the police] flagged the bus down.... They arrested Bob [an organizer] and told the bus driver that he was under arrest.... The bus driver was fined $100 for driving a bus with too much yellow in it. Now ain’t that ridiculous? After we paid the fine among us, we continued to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register. After they told me, my husband came, and said that the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register, and before he quit talking to me the plantation owner came, and said, “Fannie Lou, do you know — did Pap tell you what I said?” And I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “I meant that,” he said. “If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave... because we are not ready for that in Mississippi.” And I addressed him and told him and said, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.” I had to leave that same night. Fannie Lou Hamer, on her attempt to take a literacy test and register to vote in Mississippi (August 22, 1964), in My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered by Howell Raines.

1963	For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see... that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Rev. Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

1963	The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that [we cannot] ignore them.... We face therefore a moral crisis as a country.... It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk.... The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot... enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?... I am therefore asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in [public] facilities. President John F. Kennedy, following the murder of Medgar Evers, state field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP ( June 11, 1963).

1963	I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.... But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination. So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.... I say to you, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with.... With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at the March on Washington (August 28, 1963).

1963	We would like to be served. ''	Anne Moody, an African American college senior who, with two friends, sat down at a “whites only” lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. They and a white friend with them launched the “sit-in” despite insults and punches from a white crowd.''

1965	Freedom Rides Bus rides of black and white riders organized by the Congress of Racial Equality to integrate bus terminals in the South.

1965	Down Water Street we went, turning right and walking along the river until we reached the base of the bridge, the Edmund Pettis Bridge.... When we reached the crest of the bridge, I stopped dead still.... There, facing us at the bottom of the other side, stood a sea of blue-helmeted, blue uniformed Alabama state troopers, line after line of them, dozens of battle-ready lawmen stretched from one side of U.S. highway 80 to the other.... [T]he officer in charge... stepped forward, holding a small bullhorn up to his mouth. “This is an unlawful assembly.... Your march is not conducive to the public safety. You are ordered to disperse and go back to your church or to your homes.” I wasn’t about to turn around. We were there. We couldn’t turn and go back even if we wanted to.... There was only one option left that I could see. “We should kneel and pray.” We turned and passed the word back to begin bowing down in a prayerful manner. But that word didn’t get far. It didn’t have time. One minute after he issued his warning... Major Cloud issued an order... “Troopers, advance!” John Lewis, one of the leaders of the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.

1965	[We must have] a society in which there could exist honest white-black brotherhood. Goal for America stated by Malcolm X shortly before he was murdered by an opponent’s supporter in Harlem, New York City.

1968	I may not get there with you. But... we, as a people, will get to the promised land. ''Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee (April 3, 1968). The following day, Dr. King was shot to death.''

THE NEW IMMIGRATION

1953	This is our neighborhood.... We consider this part of the city to be ours....  The stores, barbershops, restaurants, butcher shops, churches, funeral parlors.... everything is Latino. ''Comment in El Barrio. New York’s Puerto Rican neighborhood.''

2001	When I first came, I felt like a stranger, but now I feel like I am part of America. That’s all I wanted — the American dream. Karolyn Mora, who migrated from Costa Rica in 1996, at a ceremony in Austin, Texas on April 6, 2001, when 473 immigrants from 73 countries became American citizens.

2003	For guidance, let’s look back in history to a period I studied when I became a citizen. The summer of 1787. Delegates of the original 13 states were meeting in Philadelphia... Divisions were deep. Merchant against farmer. Big states against small. North against South.... What happened in that summer of 1787 is that they put their differences aside — and produced the blueprint for our government: our Constitution. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an immigrant from Austria, inaugural address as Governor of California (November 17, 2003).

JOHN F. KENNEDY: THE NEW FRONTIER (1961-1963)

1961	I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. President Kennedy (June 1961).

1963	I was looking to the left, and I heard these terrible noises.... So I turned to the right, and all I remember is seeing my husband, he had this sort of quizzical look on his face, and his hand was up. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, remembering the instant that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas (November 22, 1963).

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON’S GREAT SOCIETY (1963-1969)

1964	In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children must not go hungry.... In a land of great learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.... Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans... have not finished five years of school.... We must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar top learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. President Lyndon Johnson, “The Great Society”

1964	We are going to pass a civil rights bill if it takes all summer. Warning from President Johnson to Congress.

1964	I’ll have those ns voting Democrat for 200 years. President Lyndon B. Johnson, following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1965	All of us... must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. President Johnson, speech before Congress, calling on it to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Bill.

1965	My first job after college was a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican American school.... Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child....  It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance — and I’ll let you in on a secret: I mean to use it. President Johnson, in a speech calling for passage of the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act of 1965.

1965	Practically none of the houses on the reservation has electricity. Half of the houses are without wells nearby. Poverty-Program workers are discovering people hauling water over fifteen miles. Indoor plumbing or telephone service is rare. There is a great deal of illness at Pine Ridge.... The infant mortality rate is twice that of the nation’s, and infectious diseases among small children are a major problem. The life expectancy for a person at Pine Ridge is thirty-eight years, compared with sixty-two years nationally.... The solution to the Indian problem still is dimly seen to lie in pouring the Indians into the big cities where they will intermingle with everyone else. But the city planners are trying to figure out how to get people out of the cramped city and back into the countryside. If the administration does not pull hard to redevelop these rural areas, it will end up merely fanning the flames in the cities. The New Republic magazine on problems at the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation (1965).

1968	Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal. From the Report of the Kerner Commission, a federal investigative body looking into racial violence during the Johnson Administration.

1968	“Is God Dead?” Title of a lead article in Time Magazine, on the decline of religion in American life in the 1960s.

THE NIXON YEARS (1969-1974)

1969	That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Col. Neil Armstrong, first astronaut to set foot on the moon (July 20, 1969).

1972	Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest electoral landslide in history; to be remembered as a peacemaker; and to be accepted by the “Establishment” as an equal. He achieved all these objectives at the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later — partly because he turned a dream into an obsession. Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s Secretary of State, writing in 1977.

1972	The first paragraph of the {first Watergate story in the Washington Post] read: “Five men... were arrested at 2:30 A.M. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee.... After midnight, Woodward received a call from Eugene Bachinski, a Post reporter.... Bachinski had something from one of his police sources. Two address books, belonging to two of the men arrested inside the Watergate, contained the name a phone number of an E. Howard Hunt, with the small notations “W. House” and “W.H.” ''Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in All the President’s Men (1974), their account of how they wrote the news stories that turned the Watergate break-in into a crisis that brought down the Nixon presidency. The Watergate was the apartment complex in Washington, DC, where the headquarters of the Democrat National Committee were located. The burglars traced to the Committee to Re-Elect the President were caught breaking into their office.''

1974	I would only say that in some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the nation.... I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is complete is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first.... Therefore I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. 	President Richard M. Nixon resigning the presidency because of the Watergate crisis (August 8, 1974).

1974	We no longer knew it, we no longer wanted to believe it. But there’s still at least one nation on this earth where the law, decidedly, is stronger than men, where, just named by the President, some judges were capable of making some decisions against him.... The idea that the President of the United States must give up his place to the liberties he took with the truth doesn’t leave [Americans] astonished. As for the Watergate scandal, we have heard much that the wiretapping at Le Canard is only a weak replica, the fact is that France has had some others.... Our old... countries... have become very indulgent toward sins. But the Americans, despite the excesses of competition and counterculture... haven’t yet loosened the cocoon of moralism, into which the puritans put their political life. French journalist André Fontaine, in the newspaper Le Monde, pointing out that the French press largely ignored government wiretapping of the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé, while Watergate brought down Nixon’s presidency because Europe abandoned morality while America had not. THE GERALD R. FORD PRESIDENCY, 1974-1977

1974	My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a Government of laws and not of men.... As we restore the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars,... let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate. President Gerald R. Ford, speech to the nation on August 9, 1974, the day he became president following the resignation of Richard M. Nixon.

THE RONALD REAGAN ADMINISTRATION, 1981-1989

1964	We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society.... We do not seek to lead anyone’s life for him — we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.... Our towns and our cities, then our counties and our states, then our regional compacts — and only then the national government. That, let me remind you, is the ladder of liberty built by decentralized power. ''Senator Barry Goldwater, speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention, accepting the party’s nomination as its presidential candidate. Although Goldwater was soundly beaten by President Lyndon Johnson, his ideas about limited government greatly influenced Ronald Reagan, a movie actor who became a political activist campaigning for Goldwater in 1964.''

1980	No, not at all. I’ve been on the same stage as John Wayne. Republican presidential Ronald Reagan, asked by a reporter if he had been nervous in the debate with President Carter.

1980	Make America Great Again Republican slogan in the 1980 election, pointing to the country’s demoralization — “malaise” according to President Jimmy Carter — during the Carter presidency.

1980	People have been talking.... Some of them in this neighborhood have been laid off for four, six months. Or their neighbor is out of work. People don’t like to see their neighbors out of work. And they’ve been scared.... The ones who’d been talking that they were for Carter, well, they changed. They were talking different. They were going for Reagan. Chicago restaurant owner Mike Savik, quoted in the Chicago Tribune after Reagan defeated President Carter (November 6, 1980).

1981??	Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem. President Ronald Reagan

1981	Please tell me you’re Republicans. President Reagan to operating room surgeons after he was shot by John Hinkley (March 30, 1981).

1981	Honey, I forgot to duck. President Reagan to his wife Nancy, when she arrived at the hospital after he was shot.

1981	Ronald Reagan came to the White House with a few simple ideas but they weren’t simple-minded ideas. At that time... we had a 70 per cent top tax rate. That was really discouraging economic growth. The second big problem... was raging inflation.... And the third thing was Reagan promised to rebuild the military... and try to bring the Cold War to an end victoriously. What made Reagan such a great president... was that he came in with these three objectives and was able to accomplish them all. Economist Stephen Moore, an adviser in the Reagan administration, explaining the basis of Reaganomics, the term for the economic policies of the Reagan administration, which centered around reducing taxes, government spending and governmental regulation of businesses (“deregulation”).

1981	He was the master. No one could do what he did, move the people that way, talk to them so that they understood.... He brought a whole generation of young activists into government; they would never have been there if he hadn’t opened the doors; they are creating the new conservatism that may well shape our politics through the turn of the century. Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan, in her book, What I Saw at the Revolution.

1984	America is back — standing tall, looking [toward the future] with courage, confidence and hope. President Reagan, 1984 State of the Union Address.

1984	I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free, And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me, And I’ll gladly stand right up to you and defend her still today, ‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land God bless the U.S.A.	Lee Greenwood’s country hit song, “God Bless the U.S.A.,” which became the theme song of President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign.

THE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE H. W. BUSH, 1989-1993

1989??	Read my lips. No new taxes. ''George Bush, inaugural speech (January 20, 1989). President Bush had to regret this promise the next year when, after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Democrat leaders in Congress refused to increase military spending unless Bush allowed some tax increases.''


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Postwar America

Transwikied from wikipedia:en. History:

13:49, 8 June 2006 Paolo Liberatore (Move to Wikiquote per afd) 11:23, 25 April 2006 Ligulem (qif → #if: (see m:ParserFunctions) using AWB) 01:29, 1 April 2006 Dmcdevit (mass-AFD tagging using AWB) 15:37, 12 March 2006 Mushroom (move to Wikiquote) 15:08, 12 March 2006 DMG413 15:04, 12 March 2006 WillaimWestchester

Should we need such a page or this page must be deleted?(StarWarsFanBoy 16:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC))

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Progressive Era

Attacking the Problems of the Cities

1895	The question at issue in New York City just at present is... as to whether public officials are to be true to their oaths of office, and see that the law is administered in good faith. The Police Board stands squarely in favor of the honest enforcement of the law. Our opponents of every grade and every shade of political belief take the position that government officials who have sworn to uphold the law shall violate their oaths whenever they think it will please a sufficient number of the public to make the violation worthwhile. It seems almost incredible that in such a controversy it should be necessary to do more than state in precise terms both propositions. Yet it evidently is necessary. Not only have the wealthy brewers and liquor sellers, whose illegal business was interfered with, venomously attacked the commissioners for enforcing the law but they have been joined by the major portion of the New York press and by the very large mass of voters who put the gratification of appetite above all law.... Very many friends of the reform movement and very many politicians of the party to which I belong have become frightened at the issue thus raised; and the great bulk of the machine leaders of the Democracy profess to be exultant at it and to see in it a chance for securing their own return to power. Senator Hill and Tammany in particular have loudly welcomed the contest. On the other hand, certain Republican politicians and certain Republican newspapers have contended that our action in honestly doing our duty as public officers of the municipality of New York will jeopardize the success of the Republican Party, with which I, the president of the Board, am identified. The implication is that for the sake of the Republican Party, a party of which I am a very earnest member, I should violate my oath of office and connive at lawbreaking.... The corrupt and partial enforcement of the law under Tammany turned it into a gigantic implement for blackmailing a portion of the liquor sellers and for the wholesale corruption of the Police Department. The high Tammany officials, and the police captains and patrolmen blackmailed and bullied the small liquor sellers without a pull and turned them into abject slaves of Tammany Hall. On the other hand, the wealthy and politically influential liquor sellers absolutely controlled the police, and made or marred captains, sergeants, and patrolmen at their pleasure. Many causes have tended to corrupt the police administration of New York, but no one cause was so potent as this.... Theodore Roosevelt, “Police Reform in New York City,” in Forum (September 1895). 1901	[Tenement building owners] for the sake of a large profit on their investments sacrifice the health and welfare of countless thousands. New York settlement house worker Lawrence Veiller, who worked for passage of the New York State Tenement House Bill of 1901.

1906	The challenge of the city has become one of decent human existence. Cleveland Progressive Frederick C. Howe.

1909	Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood. Daniel Burnham, architect and urban planner.

1909	Our task is to break up these groups or settlements, to assimilate and amalgamate these people as a part of our American race, and to implant in their children, so far as can be done, the Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law and order, and popular government. Elwood Cubberly, in his book Changing Concepts of Education.

Social Progressivism

1889	 There is nothing after disease, indigence and guilt so fatal to life itself as the want of a proper outlet for active faculties. Jane Addams (1860-1935), founder in 1889 of Hull House in Chicago, a “settlement house” where rich women could educate poor women.

c. 1890 The community is one great family [and] each member of it is bound to help the other. Louise DeKoven Bowen, president of the Chicago’s Woman’s City Club.

1901	[There is a need for an] ethical elite [of citizens] who have at heart the general welfare and know what kinds of conduct will promote this welfare. Edward A. Ross in his book Social Control.

c. 1910 They will vote — they will have the same rights as we ourselves though they have grown up ignorant of moral principle.... Let society beware, when the vicious, reckless multitude of New York boys, swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it! The necessity of educating and developing urban children, according to Rev. Charles Loring Brace, founder of The Children’s Aid Society

African-American Progressivism

1905	I have heard that you are a young woman of some ability but that you are neglecting your school work because you have become hopeless of trying to do anything in the world. I am very sorry for this.... There are in the U.S. today thousands of colored girls who would be happy beyond measure to have the chance of educating themselves that you are neglecting. If you train yourself as you easily can, there are wonderful chances of usefulness before you: you can join the ranks of 15,000 Negro women teachers, of hundreds of nurses and physicians, of the growing number of clerks and stenographers.... Ignorance is a care for nothing. Get the very best training possible & the doors of opportunity will fly open before you as they are flying before thousands of your fellows. On the other hand every time a colored person neglects an opportunity, it makes it more difficult for others of the race to get such an opportunity. Do you want to cut off the chances of the boys and girls of tomorrow? W. E. B. Du Bois, letter to an African American school student.

Women’s Rights

1902	“You cannot trust the ballot into the hands of women teachers in the public schools but you give it to men who can not read or write. You can not trust the ballot to women who are controlling millions... and helping to support the country but you give it to loafers and vagabonds who know nothing, have nothing and represent nothing. You can not trust the ballot in the hands of women who are the wives and daughters of your heroes but you give it to those who are willing to sell it for a glass of beer and you trust it in the hands of anarchists. Swedish delegate Emmy Evald, speaking at the first International Woman Suffrage Conference, Washington, DC in 1902.

Progressives and Government

1902	This is the penalty of a democracy — that we are bound to move forward or [fall backward] together. None of us can stand aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the same air. Jane Addams, in Democracy and Social Ethics

c. 1905 [Government is] an educational and ethical agency whose positive aim is an indispensable condition of human progress. University of Wisconsin economist Richard Ely. 1906	The greatest single hold of “the interest” is the fact that they are the “campaign contributors.”... Who pays the big election expenses of your congressman, of the men you send to the legislature to elect senators? Do you imagine those who foot those huge bills are fools? Don’t you know that they will make sure of getting their money back, with interest? 	David Graham Phillips, in his article, “The Treason of the Senate” Muckraker Literature

1895

I have read your book, and I have come to help. Theodore Roosevelt, incoming head of New York City’s Police Commission, to reporter Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives (1890).

1902	One of the most depressing features... is that instead of such methods arousing contempt, they are more or less openly admired.... There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair. Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice.... Business played in this way loses all its sportsmanlike qualities. It is only for tricksters. 	Ida Tarbell, in “History of the Standard Oil Company,” in McClure’s Magazine.

1902	[They] raked up the mud of society and never looked up. President Theodore Roosevelt’s characterization of “exposure journalists” or “muckrakers”.

1906	There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage.... There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust....  There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it....  These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put out poisoned bread for them, they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. Upton Sinclair, description of sausage-making in his muckraking novel, The Jungle.

1906	I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, on how his book led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909): Progressive President

c. 1900 If we wish to do good work for our country, we must be unselfish, disinterested, sincerely desirous of the well-being of the commonwealth, and capable of devoted adherence to a lofty ideal. Theodore Roosevelt

1903	Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. President Theodore Roosevelt, a supporter of conservation, on what to do with the Grand Canyon.

c. 1903 In the past, we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. The time has come for a change. President Roosevelt, on the need for conservation reform.

1905	When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean, and nobody who speaks the truth can mean, that he believes it possible to give every man the best hand. If the cards to not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing. President Theodore Roosevelt, speech on April 5.

The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1909-1913) c. 1909 “Not one cent for scenery.” Speaker of the House “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, opposing appropriating money for conservation of natural resources.

1910	The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth.... The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. Former President Roosevelt, on the stump at Ossawatomie, Kansas, speaking for anti-Taft Progressive Republican candidates.

1910	“Kick the Southern Pacific Railroad Out of Politics” 	Election slogan of Hiram Johnson’s campaign for governor of California.

1912	My hat is in the ring. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, using a boxing expression to announce that he would run for president against William Howard Taft.

1912	“Fit as a bull moose.” ''Theodore Roosevelt, on his health after being shot in the chest in an assassination attempt. The Progressive Party — which nominated him as its presidential candidate — came to be called the Bull Moose Party.''

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921): Progressive President

????	I am sorry for those who disagree with me... because I know they are wrong. Woodrow Wilson

1912	The only way that government is kept pure is by keeping... channels open, so that... there will constantly be coming new blood into the veins of the body politic.... What this country needs above everything else is a body of laws which will look after the men who are on the make rather than the men who are already made. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat Party candidate for president.

1913	We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not... stopped... to count the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women upon whom the... weight and burden of it all has fallen.... This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. President Woodrow Wilson, first inaugural address (March 4, 1913).

????	“Did you see what that boy did? He made a face at me. Did you see what I did? “No, sir.” “I made a face right back.” 	Exchange between President Wilson an his Secret Service guard, on meeting a young opponent while he was driving.

Radicalism

1905	Fellow workers, this is the continental congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism. “Big Bill” Hayward, at the founding meeting of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

1908	Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today?.... Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe (Railroad) from here to Kansas City. Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party candidate for president in 1908.

1912	[Socialism] would abolish this monstrous system and the misery and crime which flow from it. 	Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party candidate for president.


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Progressive Era

Transwikied from wikipedia:en. History:

13:49, 8 June 2006 Paolo Liberatore (Move to Wikiquote per afd) 11:23, 25 April 2006 Ligulem (qif → #if: (see m:ParserFunctions) using AWB) 01:30, 1 April 2006 Dmcdevit (mass-AFD tagging using AWB) 16:53, 12 March 2006 DMG413 15:27, 12 March 2006 WillaimWestchester

Should we need such a page or this page must be deleted?(StarWarsFanBoy 16:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC))


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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Reconstruction and the New South

DESTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH

1865	We want the burnt district of Richmond to... sit proudly again. People of Richmond, Virginia, largely destroyed in the evacuation of the Confederate government and army on April 2, not wanting its stockpiles of supplies to fall into the hands of the Union.

1865	A wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees killed by flames. 	Visitor’s description of Columbia, South Carolina, destroyed by Sherman’s army on its march northward.

1865	Our fields everywhere lie untilled. White Mississippian at the end of the war, after slaves had fled.

1870	I do not forgive. I try not to forgive. What! Forgive these people, who have invaded our country, burned our cities, destroyed our homes, slain our young men, and spread desolation and ruin over our land! No, I do not forgive them. Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney of Virginia, on the North.

LIFE IN THE POSTWAR SOUTH

1865	An’ we got on the boat in a hurry.... [W]e all give three times three cheers for the gunboat boys, and three times three cheers for big Yankee [soldiers], an’ three times three cheers for gov’ment; an I tell you every one of us, big and little, cheered loud and long and strong, an’ made the old river just ring ag’in. Account of two women slaves, Mill and Jule, who were set free by sailors on a gunboat passing their plantation.

1865	No, Miss, I must go. If I stay here I’ll never know I am free. 	Former slave in South Carolina, responding to her former owner’s request that she stay on as the family’s cook after being freed.

1865	In slavery I owns nothin’. In freedom I’s own de home and raise de family. All dat cause me worryment and in slavery I has no worryment, but I takes de freedom. Former slave in Texas, when asked which of she preferred: slavery or freedom?

1865	Right off colored folk started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they’d know what it was — like it was a place or a city. A freedman recalling how great numbers of former slaves began a great migration after the Civil War.

1865	Dear Sister Jane, Your little brother Hawkins is trying to find out where you are and where his poor old mother is — Let me know and I will come to see you — I shall never forget the bag of biscuits you made for me.... Please send me some of Julia’s hair whom I left as a baby in the cradle when I was torn away from you. Letter from former slave Hawkins Wilson to his sister, presumably sent to the plantation where they had been enslaved.

1865	Just think of whole droves of people, that had always been kept so close, and hardly ever left the plantation before, turned loose all at once, with nothing in the world, but what they had on their backs. Former slave Parke Johnson.

1865	Men are taking their wives and children, families which had been for a long time broken up are united and oh! Such happiness. Union Army officer in the postwar South.

1865	[T]he best thing about the war setting us free, [was] he could come back to us. William Curtis of Georgia, a former slave, on the return of his father, who had been sold to a planter in Virginia.

1865	In their eyes, the work of emancipation was incomplete until the families which had been dispersed by slavery were reunited. From a report of an agent by the Freedmen’s Bureau.

1865	That old white preachin’ wasn’t nothin.’  Old white preachers used to talk with their tongues without sayin’ nothin,’, but Jesus told us slaves to talk with our hearts. Former slave Nancy Williams, on why former slaves began going to their own churches after the Civil War.

1865	"Why, Si, you're a gentleman now." "Ma'am, I always was a gentleman." ''Exchange between James Henson, an escaped slave of Montgomery County, Maryland and the lady of the house, upon his return after the Civil War to the plantation where he had been a slave. Henson’s autobiography Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction became a best seller and provided information about slave life and Henson was used by Harriet Beecher Stowe as the model for Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.''

1865	It seems humiliating to be compelled to bargain and haggle with our own servants about wages. Daughter of a Georgia plantation owner.

1865	They’ve left me one inestimable privilege — to hate ‘em. I git up at half-past four in the morning, and sit up till twelve at night, to hate ‘em. Opinion of Northerners of a white North Carolinian, who lost his home, his sons, and his slaves, in the Civil War.

1865	It is the first time in my life that I ever had to give up the sidewalk to a man, much less to negroes! Eliza Andrews, a Georgia plantation mistress, after a former slave refused to give way to her on a sidewalk.

REVIVAL OF SOUTHERN WHITE POWER

1865	[Former slaves] committing riots, routs, affrays, trespasses, malicious mischief, cruel treatment to animals, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language, or acts, or assaults on any person, disturbance of the peace, exercising the function of a minister of the Gospel without a license,... vending spiritous or intoxicating liquors, or committing any other misdemeanor, the punishment of which is not specifically provided for by law. ''From the Mississippi “Black Code” (Southern state laws meant to limit the freedom of former slaves). ''

1865	The men of the North will convert the State of Mississippi into a frog pond before they will allow such laws to disgrace one foot of soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep and over which the flag of freedom waves. Editorial in the Chicago Tribune opposing the Mississippi Black Code.

1865	[N]o person of color shall pursue or practice the art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or any other trade employment, or business, besides that of husbandry [farming], or that of a servant under contract for service or labor” without buying an expensive permit. From the South Carolina Black Code.

1865	If you call this Freedom, what do you call Slavery? 	Black Southern war veteran, protesting his being forced to sign a 12-month labor contract or be arrested for vagrancy.

1865	The gentlemen of the South mean to win. They meant it in 1861 when they opened fire on Sumter. They meant it in 1865 when they sent a bullet through the brain of Abraham Lincoln. They mean it now. The moment we remove the iron hand from the Rebels’ throats they will rise and attempt the mastery. Horace Greeley, editorial in the New York Tribune (November 15, 1865).

1866	African Americans have “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens. From the Civil Rights Act of 1866, meant to weaken Southern states’ black codes.

1867	Grandfather clause Part of Black codes in Southern states excluding persons (former slaves) from having rights, such as the right to vote, not held by their grandfathers.

1868	I saw them kill my husband;... he was shot in the head while he was in bed sick.... There were between twenty and thirty men....  They came into the room....  The one... put the pistol to his head and shot him three times. Former slave Sarah Song, recounting the murder of her husband by the Ku Klux Klan.

1868	The Republicans] in time of profound peace... [brought to the country] military despotism and negro supremacy... [while the Democrats demanded] the abolition of the Freedmen’s Bureau; and all political instrumentalities designed to secure negro supremacy. Platform of the National Democrat Party, 1868.

1869	These constitutions and governments will last just as long as the bayonets that ushered them into being, shall keep them in existence, and not one day longer. A South Carolina Democratic newspaper, saying that Reconstruction will end when the Union Army is pulled out of the South.

1871	[The word carpetbagger] applied to the office seeker from the North who came here seeking office by [getting the votes of] the negroes, by arraying their political passions and prejudices against the white people of the community. Spoken by a Democrat Congressman from a Southern state.

RIGHTS FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS

1864	It is said that the colored man is ignorant, and therefore he should not vote. In saying this, you lay down a rule for the black man that you do not apply to no other class of your citizens.... If he knows enough to be hanged, he knows enough to vote. If he knows an honest man from a thief, he knows much more than some of our white voters.... All I ask, however, in regards to blacks, is whatever rule you adopt, whether of intelligence or wealth, as the condition of voting, you should apply it equally to the black man. Frederick Douglass

1865	[N]either slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.... shall exist within the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1865	I am for the “immediate, unconditional, and universal” enfranchisement of the black man, in every State of the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; fir in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself... It may be asked, “Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right.” Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is the sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote, and my heart and voice go with the movement to extend the suffrage to women.... We may be asked, I say, why we want it. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of man can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it, again, as a means for educating our race. Men are so constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities largely by the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves. Frederick Douglass, “What the Black man Wants,” a speech before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (April 1865). 1865	We would ask for no rights or privileges but such as rest upon the strong basis of justice.... We ask first, that the strong arm of law and order be placed alike over the entire people of this State; that life and property be secured, and the laborer free to sell his labor as the merchant [sells] his goods. We ask that a fair and impartial instruction be given to the pledges of the government to us concerning the land question. We ask that the three great agents of civilized society — the school, the pulpit, the press — be as secure in South Carolina as in Massachusetts or Vermont. We ask that equal suffrage be conferred upon us, in common with the white men of this State. This we ask, because ‘all free governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed’; and we are largely the majority in this State, bearing for a long period the burden of onerous taxation, without a just representation. Letter to Congress from a group of African Americans in South Carolina (November 1865).

1865	Our wives, our children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locates upon. We have a divine right to the land. Former slave Bayley Wyat

1865	[Universal manhood suffrage is] an essential and inseparable element of self-government.... [The Declaration of Independence is] the broadest, the deepest, the most comprehensive and truthful definition of human freedom that was ever given to the world. Statement of the Freedmen’s Convention of North Carolina.

1866	[All citizens are granted] equal protection of the laws. From the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1866 	The colored people are very anxious to get land of their own to live upon independently; and they want money to buy stock to make crops.... The only way to get these necessaries is to give our votes to the [Republican] party... making every effort possible to bring these blessings about by reconstructing the State. A union League organizer, working for the successful election of Brister Reese and James K. Green, two former slaves, to the Alabama state legislature.

1867	Give us our own land and we can take care of ourselves. But widout land, de ole massas can hire us or starve us, as dey please. Call of former slaves to be given land.

1867	[The land of white plantation owners had been] nearly all earned by the sweat of our brows, not theirs. It has been forfeited to the government by the treason of its owners, and is liable to be confiscated whenever the Republican Party demands it. Report of the Colored Convention, Montgomery, Alabama, arguing that rebels’ land should be turned over to former slaves.

1867	We claim exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men — we ask nothing more and will be content with nothing less.... The law no longer knows white nor black, but simply men, and consequently we are entitled to ride in public conveyances, hold office, sit on juries and do everything we have in the past been preventing from doing solely on the ground of color. Report of the Colored Convention, Montgomery, Alabama.

1869	[T]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.... The proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1869	American women of wealth, education, virtue, and refinement... [should oppose the Fifteenth Amendment] if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans, and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters. Women’s suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, of the American Equal Rights Association, opposing adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment until women were first given the right to vote.

1869	This hour belongs to the negro. African-American group to women’s rights leaders who opposed passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

1869	My reply is this: Do you believe the African race is composed entirely of males? Women’s suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reply to African-American critics.

1869	Universal suffrage can only mean in plain English the government of ignorance and vice — it means a European, and especially Celtic, proletariat [working class] on the Atlantic coast, an African proletariat on the shores of the Gulf, and a Chinese proletariat on the Pacific. Liberal Republican Charles Francis Adams, opposing the Fifteenth Amendment.

1870	This wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from... the auction-block to the ballot-box. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, on the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

1871	When myself and colleagues shall leave these halls and turn our footsteps toward our southern home we know not but the assassin may await our coming. Be it as it may we have resolved to be loyal and firm, and if we perish, we perish! I earnestly hope the bill will pass. Rep. Joseph Rainey (R-South Carolina), a former slave, urging Congress to pass the Ku Klux Klan Act.

1874	The passage of this bill will determine the civil status, not only of the negro but of any other class of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will form the capstone of that temple of liberty begun on this continent. Representative Robert B. Elliott (R-South Carolina), a former slave, speaking in the House of Representatives in favor of a civil rights bill.

PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION: LINCOLN

1864	Ten Percent Plan. President Lincoln’s plan of Reconstruction: when 10% of prewar voters in a Southern state took a loyalty oath to the United States, that state could begin to be readmitted to the Union.

1865	With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on... to bind up the nation’s wounds... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace. President Lincoln, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865).

PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION: JOHNSON

1865	Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government. Senator Ben Wade of Ohio, co-author of the Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill of 1864 that had been vetoed by President Lincoln because it would punish the South.

1865	Restoration ''Word used by Pres. Andrew Johnson for what others called “Reconstruction”, implying that the only problem was to restore the states as they were in 1860, before secession.'' 1866	[T]here were two parties — one for destroying the government to preserve slavery, and the other to break up the government to destroy slavery. The objects to be accomplished were different, it is true, but they agreed in one thing, and that was the breaking up of the government. They agreed in the destruction of the government, the precise thing which I have stood up to oppose. Whether the disunionists come from the South or the North, I stand now where I did then [in 1860], to vindicate the Union of these states and the Constitution of the country.... The war to suppress our rebellion was to prevent the separation of the states and thereby change the character of the government and weakening its power. Now what is the change? There is an attempt top concentrate the power of the government in the hands of a few, and thereby bring about consolidation which is equally dangerous and objectionable with separation.... What us being proposed? We find that, in fact, by an irresponsible central directory, nearly all the powers of government are assumed without even consulting the legislative or executive departments of the government... [in] a committee upon whom all the legislative power of the government has been conferred.... President Andrew Johnson, extemporaneous remarks attacking the Radical Republicans, on Washington’s Birthday on the White House lawn (February 22, 1866).

CONGRESS: RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION

1865	The great plantations... must be broken up, and the freedmen musty have the pieces. Senator Charles Sumner (Republican-Massachusetts)

1865	The whole fabric of southern society must be changed and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs? If the South is ever to be made a safe republic, let her lands be cultivated by the toil of the owners. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, a leader of the Radical Republicans in the House of Representatives, to a meeting of the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress.

1865	The Federal Government must eliminate the South’s “large estates, widely scattered settlements, wasteful agriculture, popular ignorance, social degradation, the decline of manufactures, contempt for honest labor, and a pampered oligarchy... [and replace it with] small farms, thrifty tillage, free schools, social independence, flourishing manufactures and the arts, respect for honest labor, and equality of political rights. Radical Republican Representative George W. Julian of Indiana, giving the ideas of Radical Republicans on reconstructing the South.

THE NEW SOUTH

1865	The war being at an end, the Southern states having laid down their arms and the questions at issue between them and the Northern states having been decided, I believe it to be the duty of everyone to unite in the restoration of the country and the reestablishment of peace and harmony. General Robert E. Lee, letter (September 7, 1865)

1865	We did anything and everything to make a living. Prominent citizens became piesellers. Colonel Cary, of General Magruder’s staff, came home to find his family desperately poor, as were all respectable folks. He was a brave soldier, an able officer — before the war, principal of a male academy at Hampton. Now he did not know to what he could turn his hand for the support of himself and his family. He walked around his place, came in, and said to his wife: “My dear, I have taken stock of our assets. You pride yourself on your apple pies. We have an apple tree and a cow. I will gather the apples and milk the cow, and you will make the pies, and I will go around and sell them.” Armed with pies, he met his aforetime antagonists at Camp Grant and conquered them quite. The pies were delicious; the seller was a soldier, an officer of distinction, in hard luck; and the men at Camp Grant were soldiers too. There was sharp demand and good prices; only the elite — officers of rank — could afford to indulge in these confections.... Colonel Cary had thrifty rivals throughout Dixie.... General Stephen Elliott sold fish and oysters which he caught with his own hands. His friend, Captain Stoney, did likewise. Gentlemen of position and formerly of wealth did not pause to consider whether they would be discredited by pursuing occupations quite as humble. Men of high attainments, without capital, without any basis upon which to make a new start in life except ‘grit,’ did what they could to find to so and made merry over it. For months after the surrender, Confederates were passing through the country to their homes, and hospitality was free to every ragged and footsore soldier; the poor best the larder of every mansion afforded was at the command of the grayjacket.... A man who belonged to the crippled squad, not one of whom had a full complement of arms and legs, told this story: As four of them were limping along near Lexington (Virginia), they noticed a grayheaded white man in rough, mud-stained clothes turning furrows and behind him a white girl dropping corn. Taking him for a hired man, they hallooed: ‘Hello, there.’ The man raised his head. ‘Say,’ they called, can you tell us where we can get something to eat/’ He waved them toward a house where a lady was on the porch asked them to have a seat and while she had food cooked. They had an idea that she prepared with her own hands the dinner to which they presently sat down, of hot hoecakes, buttermilk, and a little meat so smothered in lettuce leaves that it looked a great deal. When they had cleaned up the table, she said: “I am having more bread cooked if you can wait a few minutes. I am sorry we have not more meat and milk. I know this has been a very light repast for hungry men, but we have entertained others this morning, and we have not much left. We have to send our soldiers hungry from the door; they ought to have the best of everything when they have fought so long and bravely and suffered so much.” The way she spoke made them proud of the arms and legs they didn’t have. Now that hunger was somewhat appeased, they began to note surroundings. The dwelling was that of a military man, and a man of piety and culture. A lad running in addressed the lady as Mrs. Pendleton and said something about “where General Pendleton is plowing.” They stumbled to their crutches! and in blushing confusion humble apologies, all the instincts of the soldier shocked at the liberties they had taken with an officer of such high grade and at the ease of manner with which they had sat at his table to be served by his wife. They knew their host for William Nelson Pendleton, late brigadier general, C.S.A., chief of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, a fighting preacher. She smiled when they blundered out the excuse that they had mistaken him for a day laborer. “The mistake has been made before,” she said. “Indeed, the General is a day laborer in his own field, and it does not mortify him in the least now that all our people have to work. He is thankful his strength is sufficient, and for the help that the schoolboys and his daughters give him.” She put bread into their haversacks and sent them on their way rejoicing. The day laborer and his plow were close to the roadside, and as they passed, they drew themselves up in line and brought all the hands they had to their ragged caps in salute. Myrta Lockett Avary

c.	1871 “[The] party of progress and civilization,” and the “gospel of prosperity” Mottos of Southern Republicans, appealing for support from Southern white voters.

c. 1871 Yankees and Yankee notions are just what we need in this country. We want their capital to build factories and workshops. We want their intelligence, their energy and enterprise. Thomas Settle of North Carolina, calling for a “New South” that would become more like the North.

c. 1875 [Sharecropping is] an unwilling concession to the freedmen’s desire to become a proprietor. 	Southern Argus of Montgomery, Alabama.

c. 1875 I just got tired of working for the other fellow. I worked and toiled from year to year and all the fruits of my labor went to the man who never struck a lick... I never made anything. John F. Armstrong, a white one-time sharecropper who left sharecropping.

1877	The whole of the South is hidden by successive layers of broken promises. To trust a Southern promise would be fair evidence of insanity. Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, arguing against the “Compromise of 1877" that removed the U.S. Army from the South, thus ending Reconstruction, and returned white Democrats to power, promising that they would respect the rights of African Americans.

1877	The whole South — every state in the South — has got into the hands of the very men that held us slaves. A black Louisianan, after the “Compromise of 1877".

1877	The negro will disappear from the field of national politics. Henceforth, the nation, as a nation, will have nothing to do with him. Piece in the liberal magazine, The Nation, on the ending of Reconstruction.

1880	Set up spindles in the cotton fields. Advice of the Mississippi Valley Cotton Planters’ Association to its members.

c. 1881 The craze for Greek and Latin learning. Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, wanted American-Americans to become educated in practical skills rather than in the Classics of traditional education.

c. 1890 The South is Pennsylvania’s most formidable enemy. Pennsylvania steelmaker Andrew Carnegie, after visiting the new steel mills in Birmingham, Alabama.

1892	Solid South After Reconstruction ended, Republican state governments were replaced by racist white Democrats, and all of the South supported the Democrat candidate for president. 1895	In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.... [There were] no limits to the attainments of the Negro.... I want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world. Booker T. Washington, discussing race relations in his address at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta.

1896	[The Supreme Court gave states the power] to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting from the Court’s rulings in Plessy v. Ferguson and other cases that allowed Southern states to do away with many of the rights of African-Americans.

c. 1900 We were about five and seven years old at the time. Mama and Papa used to take us to Pullen Park in Raleigh (North Carolina) for picnics, and that particular day, the trolley driver told us to go to the back. We children objected loudly, because we always liked to sit in the front, where the breeze would blow in your hair. That had been part of the fun for us. But Mama and Papa just gently told us to hush and took us to the back without making a fuss. ''Sarah. L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Fdelany, Having Our Say. The Delany sisters lived their last days in Mount Vernon, NY.''

c. 1900 [The African-American is] a fiend, a wild beast, seeking whom he may devour. Senator Ben Tillman (D-South Carolina)

1904	The only good Negro is a dead Negro. Gov. Jefferson Davis of Arkansas to President Theodore Roosevelt (October 25).

1904		Above all other men, governor, you and I as exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law. President Roosevelt’s reply to Gov. Davis of Arkansas.

1905	Any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarous. Persistent manly agitation is the way to liberty. W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), in 1909 the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1909	Is it possible... that the nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights?... If history and reason give any distinct answer to those questions, the answer is an emphatic No. W. E. B. Dubois, in The Souls of Black Folk.


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Matteo Messina Denaro

Matteo Messina Denaro (26 April 1962 – 25 September 2023), also known as "Diabolik," was a Sicilian mafioso. He got his nickname from the Italian comic book character of the same name.

Sourced

 * I have to go, but I can't explain the reasons of my choice to you. At this moment things are testifying against me. I fight for cause that can't be understood at this time, but one day people will see that I stood on the side of what is right.
 * Letter seized in a 1993 raid of his home in Mazara Del Vallo

title: Matteo Messina Denaro


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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Rise to World Power

Expansion after the Civil War, 1865-1897

1867	“Seward’s Icebox” Term used by those who thought that Secretary of State William Seward was foolish for purchasing Alaska from Russia.

1885	God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world’s future.... Then this race,... the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization,... will spread itself over the earth. Josiah Strong, in his book, Our Country.

c. 1890 [God] has made us adept in government that we may administer governments among savages and senile peoples.... He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. Sen. Albert Beverage, stating what British poet Rudyard Kipling would call “The White Man’s Burden,” his poem at the time of the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The Spanish-American War (1898)

c. 1895 Let us rise up at once with a final burst of heartfelt energy.... Let us rise up for the true republic, those of us who, with our passion for right and our habit of hard work, will know how to preserve it. José Martí, Cuban patriot, calling for Cuban exiles to invade and liberate their home country.

c. 1895 Cuba’s children... suffer in indescribable bitterness as they see their fertile nation enchained and also their human dignity stifled... all for the necessities and vices of the [Spanish] monarchy. José Martí, Cuban patriot, calling for help from Americans.

1897	Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. Wish to return. Telegram from famed artist Frederick Remington to his employer, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.

1897	Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war. Hearst’s telegram to Remington.

c. 1897 How long are the Spaniards to drench Cuba with the blood and tears of her people?... How long shall old men and women be murdered by the score, the innocent victims of Spanish rage against the patriot armies they cannot conquer?... How long shall the United States sit idle and indifferent? Editorial in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.

1897	We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. President William McKinley, first inaugural address, opposing imperialism.

c. 1897 The Pacific is the ocean bride of America — China, Japan, and Korea — and their innumerable islands, hanging like necklaces about them, are the bridesmaids.... Let us as Americans... determine while yet in our power, that no commercial rival or hostile flag can float with impunity over the long swell of the Pacific sea. American Navy leader.

1898	Havana, Feb. 15 -- At 9:45 o'clock this evening a terrible explosion took place on board the United States battleship Maine in Havana Harbor. Many persons were killed or wounded. All the boats of the Spanish cruiser Alfonso XII. are assisting. As yet the cause of the explosion is not apparent. The wounded sailors of the Maine are unable to explain it. It is believed that the battleship is totally destroyed. The explosion shook the whole city. The windows were broken in nearly all the houses. The correspondent of the Associated Press says he has conversed with several of the wounded sailors and understands from them that the explosion took place while they were asleep, so that they can give no particulars as to the cause. WHAT SENOR DE LOME SAYS He Declares That No Spaniard Would Be Guilty of Causing Such a Disaster Senor de Lome, the departing ex-Minister of Spain to this country, who arrived in this city last night, and went to the Hotel St. Marc, at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, was awakened on the receipt of the news from Havana. He refused to believe the report at first. When he had been assured of the truth of the story he said that there was no possibility that the Spaniards had anything to do with the destruction of the Maine. No Spaniard, he said, would be guilty of such an act. If the report was true, he said, the explosion must have been caused by some accident on board the warship. New York Times, (February 16, 1898)

1898	“Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain.” Popular slogan after the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana, Cuba, which was blamed on Spain.

1898	Populists, Democrats, and Republicans are we, But we are all Americans to make Cuba free. Popular chant.

1898	[The United States has no] disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over [Cuba] except for the pacification thereof. Amendment of Sen. Henry Teller (R-Colorado) to the declaration of war against Spain (“Teller Amendment”).

1898	“Start offensive action” Telegram to Admiral George Dewey, commanding the Asiatic Squadron, from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt.

1898	“You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.” Admiral George Dewey to the commanding officer of his flagship, USS Olympia, in Manila Bay (May 1, 1898), opening hostilities in the Pacific only 11 days after the United States declared war against Spain.

1898	[Admiral Dewey’s flagship, the battleship Olympia was] a new Mayflower,... the harbinger of a new civilization. Sen. Orville Platt, commenting on the victory of Dewey’s squadron over the Spanish in the Battle of Manila Bay.

1898	Heavy rains pouring down, no tents for cover,... standing in trenches in a foot of water and mud, day and night.... Ration issue consisting of a slice of sow belly, hardtack biscuits], and some grains of coffee....  Then came the issue of fleece-lined underwear in a 132 [degree] climate....  Then came on malaria. American soldier fighting in Cuba.

1898	“Splendid little war” Secretary of War John Hay’s description of the brief and nearly bloodless Spanish American War.

Results of the Spanish-American War

1898	To educate the Filipinos, and to uplift and civilize and Christianize them. President McKinley’s goals in setting up a colonial administration for the (already largely Christian)Philippine Islands.

1898	Only through American occupation... is the idea of free, self-governing and united Philippine commonwealth at all conceivable. Report of the Philippine Commission.

1898	Insane and wicked ambition... is driving the nation to ruin.... We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln ti reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.... We insist that the subjugation of any people is “criminal aggression” and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government. 	Comment on American foreign policy by the Anti-Imperialist League, founded by a small group of prominent Bostonians in June 1898.

1898	[All] who believe in the Republic against Empire should join. The National Labor Standard newspaper, urging people to join the Anti-Imperialist League.

1898	I recognize the existence of a national sentiment in accordance with... Washington’s Farewell Address, which is against the acquisition of foreign territory; but... circumstances have changed.... We have a great commerce to take care of. We have to compete with the commercial nations of the world in far-distant markets. Commerce, not politics, is king.... The whole world sees in China a splendid market for our native products.... We are closer to her than any other commercial country except Japan. There is before us a boundless future which will make the Pacific more important to us than the Atlantic. San Francisco, Seattle, and Tacoma are in their infancy. They are destined to rival New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. If we give up the Philippines, we throw away the splendid opportunity to assert our influence in the Far East. We do this deliberately; and the world will laugh at us. Why did we take Manila?... The Philippines are a foothold for us in the Far East. Their possession gives us standing and influence. It gives us also valuable trade both in exports and imports. Should we surrender the Philippines, what will become of them?... To her [Spain] they will be valueless; and if she sells them to any commercial power she will, by that act, light the torches of war.... England will not stand by and see any other European power take the Philippines. They are on the line to Australia and India.... By holding the Philippines we postpone at least a general European war.... Charles Denby, former U.S. Minister to China, arguing that it was necessary for the U.S. to annex the Philippine Islands, in “Shall We Keep the Philippines?” Forum (November 1898).

1898	Perhaps nearer the condition of savages and barbarians than any island possessed by any other civilized nation on earth. Description of the people of the Philippines, according to Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL and vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League.

1898	The Philippines are ours forever. And just beyond the Philippines are China’s markets. We will not retreat from either.... The power that rules the Pacific is the power that rules the world. Sen. Albert Beverage

1900	We are raising more than we can consume,... making more than we can use. Therefore, we must find new markets for our produce, new occupation for our capital, new work for our labor. Sen. Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, on why the national economy needs an imperial foreign policy.

1900	Our opponents put forward as their chief objection that we have robbed these people of their liberty, and have taken them and hold them in defiance of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence in regard to the consent of the governed. As to liberty, they have never had it, and have none now, except when we give it to them protected by the flag and armies of the United States. The taking of the Philippines does not violate the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but will spread them among a people who have never known liberty. Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Massachusetts)

America and China

1899	We ask no favors; we only ask that we shall be admitted to that great market on the same terms with the rest of the world. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, supporting the American policy of an “Open Door” in China.

President Roosevelt and Foreign Policy

1903	I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate. President Theodore Roosevelt, comments afterward on helping Panama become independent in return for the U.S. getting a zone to build a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

1904	If a nation... keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing... in the Western hemisphere... may force the United States, however reluctantly,... to the exercise of an international police power. President Roosevelt, the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

1906	Steam shovels are hard at it; scooping huge masses of rock and gravel and dirt previously loosened by the drillers and dynamite blasters, loading it on trains which take it away.... They are eating steadily into the mountain cutting it down and down....  It is an epic feat. ''Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, describing the construction of the Panama Canal in a letter to his son.''

President Taft and Foreign Policy (1909-1913)

????	“Dollar Diplomacy” Expression that the focus of foreign policy under Taft was promoting business interests abroad.

President Wilson and Foreign Policy (1913-1921)

1913	“Government of butchers” President Wilson’s description of Mexico’s government under General Victoriano Huerta, which Wilson refused to recognize as legitimate.

1913	“Watchful waiting” Wilson’s policy of keeping hands off Mexico, while expecting Huerta’s government to be overthrown.

1914	[Mexico must] hoist the American flag in a prominent position and salute it with twenty-one guns. Demand of the commander of the Gulf squadron, after American sailors from the gunboat USS Dolphin were arrested in Tampico, Mexico, while going ashore to buy supplies.

1914	I... come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States ... to obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States, even amidst the distressing conditions now unhappily prevailing in Mexico. President Wilson, speaking before Congress (April 20, 1914), on the Tampico incident.

1916	“We have decided... to prepare and organize ourselves to attack the Americans in their own dens.... ''Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa, on taking revenge against the United States because President Wilson had recognized Villa’s enemy, Venustiano Carranza, as the legitimate president of Mexico. Villa later attacked the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.''


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Rise to World Power

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Settlers and Native Americans

Relations with Native Americans

1492

“I, that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see.... In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything....”

Christopher Columbus, on the Native Americans who he found on San Salvador Island (October 12, 1492).

1524

“We saw their houses made in circular or round form 10 to 12 paces in compass, made with half circles of timber... covered with mats of straw.... They move the... houses from one place to another according to the commodity of the place and season wherein they will make their abode....

“They observed in their [planting] the course of the moon and the rising of certain stars....

“Moreover they live by hunting and fishing. They live long, and are seldom sick, and if they chance to fall sick at any time, they heal themselves with fire without any physician, and they say that they die [from old] age.”

	Giovanni da Verrazano, on the Indians of the Carolina coast.

	King Philip’s War in New England

1675

“I am resolved not to see the day when I have no country.”

Metacom (called King Philip by the English), chief of the Wampanoag Indians of Massachusetts, to an English friend.

1676

“I told them it was Sabbath day and desired them to let me rest, and told them I would do as much more tomorrow. To which they answered me, they would break my face.”

Mary Rowlandson, from The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, an account from 1682 of her 11 weeks as a captive after her village was taken by Narragansett Indians.

1686

“The last wars .. have reduced them to a small number, and consequently they are incapable of defending themselves.”

	French visitor, describing the Indians of southern New England.

	William Penn in Pennsylvania

1681.

“The king of the country where I live hath given me a great province, but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends....”

From William Penn, Letter to Native Americans.

	Pontiac’s Rebellion

1763

“They are my enemies. They are your brothers’ enemies.”

Neolin, the Delaware Prophet, urging the Western tribes to drive out settlers. 1763

“[The British are] dogs dressed in red, who have come to rob [our] hunting grounds and drive away the game....

“[We must] exterminate from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us.”

Chief Pontiac, leader of rebellion against the British

1763

“Could it not be contrived to send them the small pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”

	Major General Jeffrey Amherst, commanding British forces in North America, on using biological warfare against tribes supporting Pontiac’s Rebellion.

1763

“[The Proclamation of 1763 was] a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians.”

	Colonel George Washington.

1785

“Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of these Aborigines having from choice become Europeans.”

Hector St. John Crèvecoeur

c. 1804

“There was a time when our forefathers owned this great land. Their towns extended from the rising to the setting sun.... Our towns were once large and yours were once small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets.”

Chief Sagoyewatha to white settlers.

1811

“Brothers — The white men are not friends to the Indians; at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun.

“Brothers — My people wish for peace;... but where the white people are, there is no peace....

“Brothers — if you do not unite with us, they will first destroy us, and then you will fall an easy prey to them. They have destroyed many nations of red men because they were not united.... [W]e must fight each other’s battles.”

Tecumseh, appeal to the Osages.


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Settlers and Native Americans

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Southwest Expansion and the Mexican War

EXPANSION IN THE SOUTHWEST AND THE MEXICAN WAR

ORIGINS OF THE MEXICAN WAR

1845

“The Republic of Texas has made known her desire to come into our Union, to form a part of our Confederacy and enjoy with us the blessings of liberty secured and guaranteed by our Constitution. Texas was once a part of our country, was unwisely ceded away to a foreign power, is now independent, and possesses an undoubted right to dispose of a part or the whole of her territory and to merge her sovereignty as a separate and independent state in ours.

“I congratulate my country that by an act of the late Congress the assent of this government has been given to the reunion, and it only remains for the two countries to agree upon the terms to consummate an object so important to both.

“I regard the question of annexation as belonging exclusively to the United States and Texas. They are independent powers, competent to contract; and foreign nations have no right to interfere with them or to take exceptions to their reunion.

“Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our government. Our Union is a confederation of independent states, whose policy is peace with each other and al the world. To enlarge its limits is to extend the dominion of peace over additional territories and increasing millions....

“To Texas the reunion is important because the strong protecting arm of our government would be extended over her, and the vast resources of her fertile soil and genial climate would be speedily developed, while the safety of New Orleans and our whole Southwestern frontier against hostile aggression, as well as the interests of the whole Union, would be promoted by it.”

President James K. Polk, Inaugural Address (March 4, 1845)

1846   	“Mexico has passed the boundary of the United State, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil.” ''	Pres. James K. Polk, asking Congress to declare war on Mexico.''

1847	“The great loss on both sides has deprived me of everything like pleasure.” Gen. Zachary Taylor, victor in the Battle of San Jacinto (February 1847).

1847	“The halls of Montezuma” Chapultepec, in Mexico City, former capital of the Aztecs, attacked in September 1847 by U.S. Marines attached to Gen. Winfield Scott’s army.

Opposition to the War

1847   	“A war of conquest is bad; but the present war has darker shadows. It is a war for the extension of slavery over a territory which has already been purged by Mexican authority from this stain and curse.” Charles Sumner, Report on the War

CALIFORNIA

1848	“The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the shore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry of gold! Gold!! GOLD!!! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes.” News article that appeared shortly after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill on the American River, northeast of San Francisco (January 24, 1848).

1849	“The news spreads that wonderful ‘diggings’ have been discovered... [Miners] rush vulture-like upon the scene and erect a round tent, where, in gambling, drinking, swearing and fighting, the many reproduce Pandemonium... while a few honestly and industriously commence digging for gold, and lo! As if a fairy’s wand had been waved,... a full-grown mining-town hath sprung into existence.” Louisa Smith Clapp, who accompanied her husband to California, on life among the Forty-Niners in the gold fields.

1851	“I estimate that there could have been at Hornitos from 250 to 300 persons, all men in the prime of life: I saw no women there, nor children, nor old people. In business, they spoke English and Spanish; in the street, still covered in brush, we heard all possible tongues spoken.” 	Jean-Nicolas Perlot, a Belgian, who went to the Yosemite Valley with 44 others, sent by a French company to search for and mine California gold.

1856

“Whereas, it has become apparent to the citizens of San Francisco that there is no security for life and property,... and that, by the association together of bad characters, our ballot boxes have been stolen and others substituted, or stuffed with votes that were never polled, and thereby our elections nullified, our dearest rights violated, and no other method left by which the will of the people can be manifested:

“Therefore, the citizens whose names are hereunto attached do unite themselves unto an association for the maintenance of the peace and good order of society, the prevention and punishment of crime, the preservation of our lives and property, and to ensure that our ballot boxes shall hereafter express the actual and unforged will of the majority of our citizens...”

Constitution of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco (“Vigilantes”)


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Southwest Expansion and the Mexican War

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