THE POSTWAR PERIOD 

The Civil War settled the two great problems that had been agitating the nation almost since its foundation. Permanent union on the basis of the supremacy of the nation over the states was assured by the North's victory, and, although the war was fought primarily to preserve the Union on this basis, as the conflict proceeded, the North also included in its war aims the abolition of slavery. Acts passed by Congress in 1862 abolished slavery in the territories. Calling abolition a military necessity, President Lincoln, on Jan. 1, 1863, issued the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, (q.v.), which declared free all the slaves in the rebellious states. Finally on Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in all the states and territories of the U.S., was ratified.

Supremacy of the Republican Party. 

The postwar period was marked by the dominance of Republicans in national affairs. The party remained in control of both houses of Congress until 1875 and of the presidency from 1869 until 1885. (President Andrew Johnson was a border-state Democrat who had been elected vice-president on Lincoln's Union ticket in 1864.) The war hero Ulysses S. Grant won the White House as a Republican in 1868 and 1872. He was followed by Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes, president from 1877–81, James A. Garfield (1881), and Chester A. Arthur (1881–85). Their policies generally favored the interests of big business and, especially in the Grant administration, were tolerant of corruption.

Reconstruction. 

The first issue that the nation faced after the Civil War was determining how to bring the seceded states back into the Union. The question, which had emerged even during the war, at once became a matter of contention between the president and the Congress. Lincoln's wartime plan for RECONSTRUCTION, (q.v.) of the southern states was to readmit them on liberal and easy terms; the conditions that Congress wished to impose were much more severe. Andrew Johnson, who became president on April 15, 1865, after the assassination of Lincoln, initially espoused views on Reconstruction similar to those that Lincoln had voiced during the war, but Johnson's attempt to put these conditions into effect without consulting Congress, as well as his tolerance of southern violence against the freedmen, brought about a series of bitter disputes between the executive and legislative branches of the national government. The quarrel was won by Congress, which passed over the president's veto its own plan, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. By this plan, most of the South was divided into five military districts, each supervised by a Union major general in command of a detachment of troops. Suffrage was granted the black population; and by the third section of the 14th Amendment (adopted 1868) to the Constitution, the former political leaders of the South were denied participation in the various state governments set up by the Reconstruction Acts.

The resulting Reconstruction governments provoked widespread resentment in the southern states. Most white southerners claimed that the blacks who won office during Reconstruction were incapable of running the government. Southerners also contended that the white northerners who had moved to the South and earned positions in the Reconstruction governments sought only to plunder southern treasuries. These charges, however, were generally untrue. Although economic opportunism and official corruption were certainly facts of life in the South, they were no more prevalent than elsewhere in the nation. Southerners simply were unwilling to accept any form of government in which blacks and northerners played a significant role, and they attempted to disrupt the Reconstruction governments with outbreaks of violence and through intimidation, orchestrated principally by the secret society known as the KU KLUX KLAN, (q.v.). The North eventually grew tired of imposing Reconstruction by force, and by 1877 white southerners had regained control of all their state governments.

Influence of big business. 

Because of the alliance between financial interests and the Republican party machine, Republican rule during the first two decades after the Civil War resulted in a period of unparalleled favoritism to big business. For example, government policy under Republican control unduly favored the organizers of new railroad enterprises in the West. In 1862 Congress chartered five railroads in the Far West, and it subsequently granted these railroads large loans and huge tracts of far western territory; the Northern Pacific Railroad alone received 18.8 million ha (47 million acres) of land. Also during this period, a series of frauds was perpetrated, notably during the administration of President Grant (see WHISKEY RING,). Unscrupulous politicians who were in alliance with corrupt business executives stole from both the public treasury and the public domain. By the Homestead Act of 1862, which was intended to encourage western migration, the government gave 65 ha (160 acres) of land free to any head of a family who contracted to cultivate the tract for five years; millions of acres, however, were placed fraudulently into the hands of so-called land sharks. Even the epoch-making achievement of building the 2900-km (1800-mi) railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast (finished on May 10, 1869), which completed the first American transcontinental railroad route, was tainted with fraud. See CRÉDIT MOBILIER OF AMERICA,.

Reform movements. 

In moves to counter this state of affairs, a dissident group within the Republican party, called the LiberalRepublicans, initiated (1870–72) a movement to bring about civil service reform, to reduce the protective tariff that was causing high prices, and to withdraw the federal troops upholding the black Republican state governments in the South; the group also condemned the corruption in the national government. In the election of 1872 the Liberal Republicans picked as its nominee the newspaper editor Horace Greeley for president, but although he was also the nominee of the Democratic party, he was defeated by Grant, the Republican candidate. Outside the party, a strong protest movement against the economic burdens imposed on the agricultural classes of the West and elsewhere by the railroads, particularly in the form of high freight rates charged to carry crops and supplies, arose among American farmers (see GRANGER MOVEMENT,). A movement to bring about labor reforms and currency reforms that would make more money available to the debtor classes, especially the farmers, resulted in the formation of the GREENBACK PARTY,, later called the Greenback-Labor party (qq.v.); the Greenback party in 1876 nominated the philanthropist Peter Cooper for president, but he received only 1 percent of the vote. The election of 1876 was won by the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes after a bitter struggle with his Democratic opponent Samuel J. Tilden.

Hayes's administration. 

Hayes was not a machine politician; his administration was marked by his efforts to inaugurate various reforms, all of which were opposed by most other party leaders. For instance, he withdrew the federal troops still supporting carpetbag governments in the South (in Louisiana and South Carolina), although his action meant that the governments of these states would immediately come under the control of the Democratic party. Hayes's administration was also notable for two financial measures. One measure, passed over Hayes's veto, was the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which answered the demands of western silver-mine owners who desired a market for their product and western farmers and others who desired an increased amount of currency in circulation. By this act, the U.S. government agreed to purchase at least $24 million worth of silver annually from the miners and to coin the supply into silver dollars. The second measure was the resumption by the U.S. Treasury in 1879 of specie payment, that is, payments in gold for outstanding paper money; such payments, suspended during the Civil War, increased faith in the credit of the U.S.

Largely because of his opposition to the Republican machine, Hayes refused renomination by the Republicans in 1880. At the convention, however, an inconclusive contest between the two machine candidates, Grant and James G. Blaine, led to the nomination of a compromise candidate, James A. Garfield. Garfield was elected over the Democratic candidate, Winfield S. Hancock, and once in office, he opposed the Republican machine leaders, principally by refusing to make federal appointments according to their orders. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a disappointed office-seeker, Charles J. Guiteau (c. 1840–82), and died on September 19; he was succeeded by the Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur, who was faithful to the party machine.

Reemergence of the Democratic Party. 

During Arthur's administration, several off-year elections in which the Democratic party won important state offices alerted the Republican party to the growing dissatisfaction with its partisan policies; notable among these Democratic victories was the election of Grover Cleveland as governor of New York. The Republican party sought to placate this dissatisfaction by passing in 1883 a civil service reform bill, but national feeling had so turned against the Republican party by 1884 that for the first time since 1856 the Democrats elected a president. Grover Cleveland defeated the Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, after a campaign remarkable for the rancor with which the two parties attacked each other.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS (1885–1920) 

President Cleveland in his first administration (1885–89) was confronted with five major domestic problems, involving the federal civil service, federal pensions, labor unrest, abuses in the business methods of the railroads, and the Treasury surplus and the tariff.

Although Cleveland was a strong advocate of a federal civil service with appointments based on merit, the demand of Democratic party leaders for federal jobs led him to agree to remove arbitrarily numerous officeholders and to select replacements based on service to the Democratic party; however, he did add 12,000 positions to the group already based on merit. The administration was plagued by numerous private pension bills passed by Congress, chiefly in favor of Civil War veterans who could not get on the regular pension rolls; Cleveland vetoed more than 200 of these bills.

Beginnings of the Labor Movement. 

Cleveland's administration was also noted for the emergence of labor as an organized economic and political force in the U.S. Trade unions were formed on a national scale between 1861 and 1866; and the first attempt to unite all trade unions into one federation took place in 1866, with the organization of the National Labor Union (see TRADE UNIONS IN THE UNITED STATES,), which was disbanded in 1872 because of internal strife. It was succeeded by the KNIGHTS OF LABOR, (q.v.), organized in 1869. By 1886 this body was a national organization with more than 700,000 members. Its policy was to demand of state and national governments laws to ameliorate injustices inflicted on the working class by contemporary economic conditions and practices. In Cleveland's administration, labor for the first time in the U.S. made vigorous claims, through demands for higher wages and shorter hours, to a larger share of the national income than it had previously enjoyed. Such demands resulted in unprecedented conflict between capital and labor; in 1886 and 1887 an estimated 3000 strikes took place in the U.S. The strike at the McCormick reaper works in Chicago occasioned the notorious HAYMARKET SQUARE RIOT, (q.v.), which dampened support for the labor movement.

Railroad Regulation and the Tariff. 

In Cleveland's administration also, much criticism was directed at the railroads, which had practically a monopoly of freight transportation on western routes and practiced extortion and discrimination in setting freight rates. In 1887, as the result of agitation for federal control of the railroads, the U.S. Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act to regulate railroads, establishing a precedent for the future for similar regulation of other interstate commercial enterprises.

The most important issue in Cleveland's administration, however, was the tariff. On taking office, the president found a surplus of nearly $500 million in the Treasury; this sum had accumulated because of the high protective tariffs that had prevailed since the Civil War. Cleveland felt that bringing about a reduction in the tariff was in the interest of consumers and taxpayers; such a reduction would discourage Congress from making extravagant appropriations and would also lower prices on many commonly used commodities. Through his influence, the House of Representatives passed a bill reducing the tariff by 7 to 8 percent, but the bill was not passed in the Senate. The tariff was the principal issue of the presidential campaign of 1888. By making it appear that Cleveland, who actually was a proponent only of a low tariff, favored a free-trade policy that would enable British manufacturers to undersell U.S. manufacturers in the U.S. market, the Republican party brought about the election of Benjamin Harrison.

The Harrison Administration. 

Harrison's administration brought a reversal of the financial policies of Grover Cleveland. Congress disposed of the Treasury surplus by making large appropriations for pensions, naval vessels, lighthouses, coast defenses, and other projects. It also passed the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised the already high protective duties and resulted in higher prices for many household commodities. In order to gain the support of the West for the bill, Congress in 1890 passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, by which the government agreed to buy 160 kg (4,500,000 oz) of silver every month and to issue paper money equaling the full amount purchased. Also in 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” Although the nation favored this measure, it reacted against the higher prices brought about by the McKinley Act by electing a Democratic Congress in 1890. In 1892 former Democratic President Grover Cleveland won his second term. A feature of the campaign was the emergence of a new political party—the PEOPLE'S PARTY (q.v.), usually known as the Populist party—formed principally by western farmers and workers who were members of the Farmers' Alliances or of the American Federation of Labor. The People's party nominee for president, James Baird Weaver (1833–1912) of Iowa, ran on a platform that included demands for the free coinage of silver, government ownership of important utilities, and election of U.S. senators by popular vote.

The Second Cleveland Administration. 

Cleveland's second administration was marked by increasing conflict between the interests of the agricultural reformers, whose followers lived in the West, and those of the large bankers and manufacturers of the country, the seat of whose enterprises was generally in the East. Those who expected Cleveland and his solidly Democratic Congress to effect financial and economic reforms demanded by the West suffered disappointment. Although pledged to a tariff for revenue only, through the efforts of senators devoted to protecting the interests of large corporations or trusts, Congress passed another high protective tariff; and the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the income tax law. (The burdens of this tax, which had been much stiffened in 1894, had fallen on the comparatively well-to-do.) In addition to legislation and judicial decision that displeased the West, the administration saw a period of industrial depression, high prices, widespread unemployment, lockouts, and strikes. The most important strike was that in 1894 of the employees of the Pullman Co., who were led by the American Railway Union. The strike, to prevent wage cuts, resulted in violence, destruction of property, the sending by President Cleveland of federal troops to keep order in Chicago, the breaking of the strike by federal injunction, the imprisonment of several strike leaders (including the noted labor leader Eugene V. Debs), and increasing discontent with the administration on the part of the working classes, particularly the Populists and the radicals among the Democrats. This dissatisfaction was expressed at the Democratic convention of 1896. Dominated by the radical elements of the West, the convention issued a platform demanding, among other things, the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 (see BIMETALLISM,), and an end to government by federal injunction, as in the Pullman strike. The Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for president; the Republicans, William McKinley. The chief issue of the campaign, in which the economic interests of West and East were sharply opposed, was the silver question. After a strenuous contest, McKinley defeated Bryan.         T.An., TYLER ANBINDER, Ph.D.

The McKinley Administrations. 

The principal event of McKinley's first administration was the Spanish-American War (1898). The U.S. victory in the war resulted in the acquisition by the U.S. of the Philippine Islands as well as other territories not part of the North American continent. Expansion of the nation to include such regions was denounced as imperialism by the Democratic party, and became the principal issue of the 1900 presidential campaign. The nation, however, supported the policy of expansion as carried out by the McKinley administration; in the election McKinley again defeated Bryan, this time by a popular majority of almost 1 million votes and by 292 electoral votes to 155. In September 1901 McKinley was assassinated by a crazed anarchist, and Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became president. His administrations marked a new attitude held by a section of the Republican party toward the important social, political, and economic questions of the time, and led gradually to a sharp split in the party.

Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism. 

Theodore Roosevelt, like Jackson and Lincoln, believed that the president had the duty of initiating and leading Congress to implement a policy of social and economic benefit to the people at large. As he himself put it, he found the presidency “a bully pulpit.” Roosevelt's policies, designed to secure a greater measure of social justice in the U.S., were outlined in his first message to Congress, on Dec. 3, 1901, which included demands for federal supervision and regulation of all interstate corporations; for amendment of the Interstate Commerce Act to prohibit railroads from giving special rates to shippers; for the conservation of natural resources; for federal appropriations for irrigation of arid regions in the West; and for extension of the merit system in civil service. President Roosevelt was particularly noted for his policy regarding the type of business combination known as a trust. The number of trusts in the U.S. had increased greatly at the end of the 19th century; only 60 had existed in the U.S. before the Spanish-American War, whereas 183 were formed between 1899 and 1901. Roosevelt recognized the right of such combinations to exist, although many of them had practical monopolies of vital commodities such as oil, beef, coal, and sugar or of important utilities such as the railroads; but Roosevelt also insisted on the right of the government to control and regulate the trusts. At his urging, Congress passed several measures designed to help enforce the antitrust laws already on the statute books; among the new laws were the Elkins Act (1903), aimed at eliminating the discriminatory practice of secret rebates given by various railroads to certain shippers, and the Hepburn Act (1906), aimed at strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission in its authority over railroads and other public carriers. During his administrations (after completing McKinley's administration, Roosevelt was elected in 1904), the Department of Justice instituted 43 suits against the trusts and won several important judicial decisions, including one ordering the dissolution of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey as a holding company with a monopoly of oil refining.

Other domestic reforms in Roosevelt's program, which he called the Square Deal, were his expansion of forest reserves and national parks; the appointment of the National Conservation Commission in 1908 to promote further conservation; and the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act following a federal investigation of packing-house conditions prompted by revelations made in Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle (1906). Roosevelt gained worldwide importance through his dramatic speeches and actions as president, his inauguration of the building of the Panama Canal, and his activities in ending the Russo-Japanese War. He declined to run for reelection in 1908, and, on his recommendation, his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, was nominated by the Republicans. Taft easily defeated his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan.

The Taft Administration. 

The Republican platform of 1908, like the Democratic platform of that year, called for a downward revision of the tariff. Nonetheless, the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, which Congress passed in 1909, was still a high protective tariff. A pronounced split over the tariff questions and other issues developed in the Republican party during Taft's administration. On one side was the conservative element, the so-called standpatters, who wanted a high tariff and opposed the kind of reforms initiated by Roosevelt; on the other were the so-called insurgents, later known as progressives, who denounced the high rates of the Payne-Aldrich tariff as a betrayal of the promises made in the Republican platform and criticized the administration for refusing to continue the reforms begun by Roosevelt. Former President Roosevelt openly sided with the progressives; he supported not only tariff revision but also such political and economic reforms as direct primaries, the recall, and an income tax.

In January 1911 the National Republican Progressive League was organized by the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, to take political action for the principles of the progressive element in the Republican party. By 1912 the progressives had elected several governors in western states. Standpatters and progressive Republicans engaged in a bitter battle for control of the Republican national convention of June 1912. Defeated in their efforts to seat their delegates, the progressives, led by Roosevelt, bolted the convention and in August organized the Progressive party, popularly known as the Bull Moose party, and nominated Roosevelt for president and Gov. Hiram W. Johnson (1866–1945) of California for vice-president. The regular Republican convention had nominated Taft, and the Democratic party nominated Gov. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. Because of the split in the Republican ranks, Wilson won decisively.

Wilson and the New Freedom. 

Woodrow Wilson, like Roosevelt, believed that the presidency should be used for initiating and guiding national legislation in accordance with the chief executive's interpretation of the will of the people. In his inaugural address, he announced his dedication to the task of improving the national life in all possible aspects. Wilson's social, economic, and political policies as a unit are sometimes known as the New Freedom, from the title of a volume by him published in 1913 and containing significant passages from his addresses in the campaign of 1912. Displaying unusual executive ability and skillful control of his cabinet and Congress during most of his two terms in office (he was reelected in 1916), Wilson succeeded in carrying out notable revisions and reforms in the laws governing the tariff, the banking system, trusts, labor, and agriculture.

Under his guidance and urging, Congress in 1913 passed the Underwood Tariff Act, which provided for a general decrease in the Payne-Aldrich tariff schedules and for an income tax to bring in sufficient revenue to compensate for any loss in national revenue occasioned by the lower tariff duties. To provide the means for furnishing an elastic currency, that is, one that could be readily expanded or contracted to suit the national need, and to establish more effective general supervision of banking than existed at the time, Wilson actively advocated the passage by Congress of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which resulted in the organization of the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, (q.v.). Also in 1913 the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, requiring that U.S. senators be elected by popular vote rather than by state legislatures.

Wilson considered private monopoly “indefensible and intolerable” and prevailed on Congress in 1914 to pass two important pieces of legislation in regard to trusts. One established the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and prevent unfair methods of business competition; the second was the Clayton Antitrust Act, designed primarily to punish those guilty of employing such unfair methods. The Clayton Act also exempted all labor unions and agricultural associations from the provisions of the antitrust laws; prohibited, in most instances, the use of the injunction in labor disputes; and expressed the principle that strikes, peaceful picketing, and boycotts do not violate the federal laws. Other measures to protect labor passed during Wilson's administration include the La Follette Act, which regulated working conditions for seamen on U.S. ships, and laws providing an 8-hour working day for railroad workers on interstate lines and prohibiting child labor under certain conditions. The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 established 12 federal land banks to make money available for long-term farm mortgages at reasonable rates.

The most important issues of Wilson's first and second terms, however, were those arising from the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, the entrance of the U.S. into the war in 1917, and the making of peace in 1919. For discussion of these issues, see World War I, below.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS (1865–1920) 

The period included in the following summary of the foreign relations of the U.S. may be divided into three parts. In the first, from 1865 to 1898, U.S. foreign policy was determined principally by the attitudes and actions of foreign governments. U.S. foreign policy during these three decades was strongly nationalistic; it did not concern itself with world issues, nor did it enable the U.S. to play an important part in world affairs. As a result of the Spanish-American War, however, the U.S. acquired territorial possessions outside its continental area, giving the nation problems of colonial government and control that, together with other factors, compelled it to assume an increasing role in world affairs. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought a period of diplomatic conflict between the U.S. and Great Britain and between the U.S. and Germany; in 1917 the U.S. was finally drawn into the war against Germany and its allies. The U.S. was influential in the writing of the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war in 1919. The U.S. Senate's rejection of the treaty and of U.S. membership in the League of Nations, the covenant for which formed part of the treaty, temporarily reversed the tendency toward U.S. involvement in world affairs.

The Influence of Foreign Governments 

(1865–98). During the American Civil War, both France and Great Britain sought to profit by the federal government's preoccupation with its conflict with the South. Napoleon III of France, ignoring the protests of the U.S. Department of State that he was violating the Monroe Doctrine, in 1863 made Maximilian, archduke of Austria, the emperor of Mexico, and in 1864 supported with French troops Maximilian's invasion of Mexico. After the close of the Civil War, however, more vigorous U.S. objections resulted in the withdrawal in 1867 of the French forces, Maximilian's loss of his throne, and his execution by rebellious subjects. Great Britain during the Civil War had permitted construction in British shipyards of Confederate cruisers, which inflicted severe losses on northern shipping. The U.S. sought damages from Great Britain to compensate for the losses caused by the Confederate ships, particularly the cruiser Alabama (see ALABAMA CLAIMS). In contrast to France and Great Britain during the Civil War, Russia was friendly to the U.S. The amicable Russo-American relations of the period led in 1867 to the U.S. purchase from Russia of Alaska, then known as Russian America; the U.S. paid $7.2 million in gold for the territory.

Expansion in the Pacific. 

The last quarter of the 19th century also witnessed a number of disputes between the U.S. and Great Britain: the BERING SEA CONTROVERSY, (q.v.), a dispute over U.S. fishing rights in waters off Canada and Alaska, which caused friction between Canada and the U.S. until the matter was arbitrated during the administration of Cleveland; and a dispute that arose when the U.S. felt that Great Britain was attempting, despite the Monroe Doctrine, to add Venezuelan territory to British Guiana (now Guyana). The Venezuelan boundary question was so sharply disputed by the diplomats of Great Britain and the U.S. that war fever was engendered in both countries; the matter was finally settled in 1897 by arbitration, largely in favor of Great Britain. The last third of the century was also marked by the U.S. acquisition of harbor privileges in the Samoan Islands, and in 1899 by the acquisition of the island of Tutuila (see AMERICAN SAMOA,). In 1893 a revolution in the Hawaiian Islands was led by U.S. sugar planters, who had acquired large interests there since earlier in the century. The revolt resulted in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the subsequent annexation of the island group by the U.S. in 1898. In the last half of the century the U.S. also acquired several additional islands in the Pacific, including Wake and Midway.

Confrontation with Spain. 

The outstanding conflict with a foreign government in the second half of the 19th century was that with Spain over the island of Cuba. During the TEN YEARS' WAR, (q.v.), which took place from 1868 to 1878 between Spain and its Cuban subjects, a Spanish warship captured the U.S. steamer Virginius, which was bringing supplies to the Cuban insurgents, and executed some of the crew, including eight U.S. citizens; the so-called VIRGINIUS AFFAIR, (q.v.) aroused considerable ill-feeling in the U.S. against Spain. Matters came to a climax when the U.S. battleship Maine, lying in the harbor of Havana to protect U.S. citizens in Cuba, was blown up on Feb. 15, 1898, with the loss of 260 lives. Although it could not be determined at the time whether the Maine was blown up by the Spanish, by Cuban action, or by internal combustion, U.S. opinion placed the onus on Spain. (In 1969 U.S. Navy research confirmed that the explosion was caused by a defective boiler.) On April 19, 1898, Congress adopted a resolution that recognized Cuba's independence, demanded that Spain withdraw from Cuba, and authorized the president to use force to carry out the resolution; this was practically a declaration of war against Spain.

In the brief war that ensued, the U.S. won a decisive victory. The Treaty of Paris, which concluded the conflict on Dec. 10, 1898, provided for the independence of Cuba; the cession by Spain to the U.S. of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands; and the payment to Spain of $20 million by the U.S. for the Philippines. The acquisition by the U.S. of distant territories was denounced by many Americans as imperialism, and considerable opposition to the treaty was expressed in the Senate before that body finally ratified it. That the American people on the whole agreed with President McKinley's policy of territorial expansion was made clear by his victory over Bryan in the election of 1900, in which this policy was one of the principal issues.

After the Spanish-American War. 

The conclusion of the Spanish-American War confronted the U.S. with the problem of organizing and administering Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba, now independent of Spain and under U.S. occupation. The U.S. held a protectorate over Cuba until 1902; in that year, after the Cubans had incorporated into their constitution a number of provisions insisted on by the U.S. for its own military and commercial advantage, and had held elections, the U.S. occupation forces turned Cuba over to its first president, Tomás Estrada Palma. In Puerto Rico, by terms of the Foraker Act, Congress in 1900 set up a civil government, and the Jones Act of 1917 granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans. In the Philippines, insurgents led by Emilio Aguinaldo initially resisted the U.S. occupation, but the last guerrillas gave up in 1902. The Jones Act of 1916 instituted an elected senate and promised eventual independence; however, not until July 4, 1946, did the Philippines become a sovereign state.

Roosevelt's “big stick.” 

During the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, the foreign policy of the U.S. was aggressive; in the Caribbean area, in the Far East, and elsewhere, U.S. policies were vigorously stated and enforced by diplomatic or military action when necessary. The Spanish-American War, during which U.S. naval units in the Pacific were forced, when needed in the Caribbean Sea, to steam down the coast of South America, around Cape Horn, and then northward, proved the necessity of an ocean-to-ocean canal either in Nicaragua or the Isthmus of Panama, which for reasons of national defense would be under exclusive U.S. control. On the initiative of President Roosevelt, the U.S. in 1903 concluded the Hay-Herrán Treaty with Colombia, of which Panama was then a province, granting the U.S. a long-term lease over a 16-km (10-mi) wide zone in Panama. The Colombian senate rejected the treaty, whereupon a rebellion, actively supported by the U.S., broke out in Panama, which became an independent republic. By the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 with the Republic of Panama, the U.S. obtained in perpetuity, for an initial payment of $10 million and an annual payment of $250,000, the 16-km (10-mi) zone it required for a canal. Construction of the canal was begun at once and completed in 1914. (By treaties ratified in 1978, the U.S. relinquished the Panama Canal Zone in 1979 and pledged to hand over the canal itself to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999.)

In the Far East, at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt secured the recognition by the belligerents of the neutrality of all of China with the exception of Manchuria; kept France and Germany from helping Russia; and in 1905, by his mediation, brought about the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the war.

The foreign policy of the U.S. during the administration of Woodrow Wilson was concerned with four principal problems: Japanese protest against the California Landholding Act, or Webb Act, of 1913; British objection to U.S. policy regarding tolls for the Panama Canal; the Mexican situation; and World War I.

Relations with Japan and Britain. 

By the Webb Act, California denied to Japanese the right to acquire land or long leaseholds. Japan protested that this act violated rights given it by treaty with the national government, but the federal government disclaimed the power to interfere with state laws such as the act in question. By the Tolls Act of 1912, the U.S. levied tolls on all vessels using the Panama Canal excepting those of U.S. registry employed in coastwise trade. Great Britain protested that the act violated treaty rights that had guaranteed equality of treatment in the Panama Canal for the ships of all nations. At the urging of President Wilson, who desired to avoid friction with Great Britain while engaged in controversy with Japan and was eager to obtain British support for U.S. policy in Mexico, and for other reasons, Congress repealed the act in 1914.

U.S. actions against Mexico. 

The situation in Mexico had, since 1910, caused the U.S. government great concern. In 1911 the dictator Porfirio Díaz had been overthrown by a revolution led by the reformer Francisco Indalecio Madero. Madero, whose efforts to bring about reforms in Mexico were viewed sympathetically by the U.S., was murdered in 1913, and Gen. Victoriano Huerta seized the government and ruled as a dictator. Although 22 of the 27 Mexican states supported Huerta, and 26 foreign nations recognized him as president of Mexico, Wilson refused to recognize him on the grounds that the new regime had brought about the murder of Madero and was, in addition, too weak to keep order in Mexico. In 1914 the U.S. aided Gen. Venustiano Carranza, the leader of a revolution against Huerta, by allowing Carranza to obtain arms in the U.S. Huerta retaliated by acts of reprisal against U.S. nationals, and the U.S. countered by forcibly occupying Veracruz; the landing operations there cost 17 American lives. Mediation by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (the so-called ABC powers) in order to prevent war between Mexico and the U.S. resulted in the resignation of Huerta and the assumption of power by Carranza, whose government the U.S. recognized in 1915. A number of rebellions had been in progress against Carranza; all the leaders of these but one, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, now laid down their arms. Villa still refused to obey Carranza's authority, also attacked foreigners, and in 1916 led a raid into Columbus, N.Mex., killing 16 persons and partly destroying the town by fire. With the permission of Carranza, the U.S. sent into Mexico a military force under Gen. John J. Pershing to find and punish Villa. He eluded pursuit; Carranza, fearing that the U.S. force might be used against his government, demanded its withdrawal, and the expedition was recalled without accomplishing its purpose.

World War I. 

The most difficult and far-reaching problems of foreign policy that arose in Wilson's administration were caused by World War I. At the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1914 between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, President Wilson formally proclaimed the neutrality of the U.S. His proclamation was not sufficient, however, to prevent strong partisan feeling from arising in the U.S., nor could it prevent difficulties with both warring groups in respect to U.S. neutral rights. The U.S. charged that Great Britain, in the course of maintaining a blockade against the Central Powers, was interfering with U.S. shipments to other neutral nations and was in other ways violating U.S. neutral rights at sea. The British replies to these protests, although not entirely satisfactory, were sufficiently reasonable and conciliatory to mollify U.S. public opinion.

German submarine warfare. 

The dispute between the U.S. and Germany was far more serious. In order to prevent food, munitions, and other supplies from reaching Great Britain, Germany in 1915 declared the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland a war zone in which German submarines would sink all enemy vessels without the visit or search stipulated by international law; to avoid the possibility that neutral vessels might be sunk by mistake, or that neutrals might be killed, Germany warned neutral ships not to enter the zone, and advised citizens of neutral nations not to travel on ships of the Allied nations. To U.S. protests against this declaration, Germany made an intransigent reply; and in May 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania off the Irish coast with a loss of 1198 persons, of whom 128 were U.S. citizens. The Germans asserted that the Lusitania was carrying munitions to Britain, and later research has proven this to be true. But the American public was outraged by the sinking, and strong protests by the U.S. State Department brought a promise from Germany not to sink any passenger liners without taking precautions to protect the lives of noncombatants.

U.S. enters the war. 

In March 1916, however, a German submarine sank an unarmed French Channel steamer, the Sussex, with the loss of two Americans; whereupon President Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations with the German government unless it abandoned “its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels.” In May the German government pledged not to sink merchant vessels without warning and without saving the lives of those aboard; and for nine months the pledge was kept generally to the satisfaction of the U.S. Wilson's vigorous diplomacy seemed to have averted war with Germany, and as the Democratic candidate in the presidential election of 1916, Wilson was elected over the Republican nominee, Charles Evans Hughes, largely because “he kept us out of war.” The war, however, was imminent. At the end of January 1917, Germany broke the so-called Sussex Pledge by declaring unrestricted submarine warfare in a zone even larger than the one it had proclaimed in 1915. In reply, on February 3, Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and later in the month, at his request, Congress passed a bill permitting U.S. merchant vessels to arm. New depredations by German submarines against neutral shipping, and the discovery of a plan made by the German Foreign Office to unite Germany, Mexico, and Japan against the U.S. if the U.S. entered the war, led Wilson on April 2, 1917, to request Congress to declare war. On April 6, Congress passed a resolution declaring a state of war with Germany. See WORLD WAR I,.

Peace treaties. 

President Wilson played an important part in the peace conference in 1919 at Paris that followed the defeat of Germany, but his intention of bringing about a peace based on his program known as the 14 points was frustrated by the adroit diplomacy of the other Allies, who were intent on inflicting penalties upon Germany. The Treaty of Versailles (see VERSAILLES, TREATY OF,), which declared Germany guilty of all the economic losses sustained by the peoples of the Allied nations and established a Reparations Commission that subsequently imposed upon Germany reparations amounting to $33 billion, was signed by Germany only after protest. The only important part of Wilson's peace program that was written into the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations. Although Wilson toured the U.S. to raise support for the League and the treaty, the Senate did not ratify it. Subsequently, treaties between the U.S. and Germany, Austria, and Hungary were separately negotiated and ratified by the Senate.

In domestic affairs Wilson achieved a victory when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women voting rights, was passed in 1919 and ratified in 1920 (see WOMAN SUFFRAGE,).

THE ROARING TWENTIES: BOOM AND CRASH 

The American people in 1920 elected as president Warren G. Harding, the Republican candidate. A time of unusual prosperity followed for U.S. industry. After Harding's sudden death in 1923, however, many of the men he appointed to government office were found to be corrupt (see TEAPOT DOME,). Even so, his vice-president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, won the presidential election of 1924 by defeating John W. Davis, the Democratic nominee, and Robert M. La Follette, candidate of the League for Progressive Political Action. In the campaign of 1928, in which the Republican Herbert C. Hoover ran against the Democrat Alfred E. Smith, continued prosperity and the fact that Smith was a Roman Catholic and advocated the repeal of the 18th Amendment, which had established Prohibition in the U.S. (see below), led to another Republican victory. During this period (1920–32) of Republican domination of the national government, several important economic and social problems confronted the nation, including questions involving the tariff, the farmers, the railroads, public utilities, immigration, labor, Prohibition, and the results of the panic of 1929.

High Tariffs—Low Farm Prices. 

This period of Republican domination was one of high tariffs. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922 was a protective levy that restored customs duties to about the level of the protective Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909, and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930 raised the rates in many schedules even higher than those in the Fordney-McCumber tariff. The Hawley-Smoot tariff was criticized by economists and political leaders as an unfortunate example of economic nationalism at a time when international cooperation was necessary; moreover, as reprisal against the high rates of the tariff, in the two years after its enactment, more than 20 nations raised the levels of their duties against goods from the U.S.

For the U.S. farmer, the period following World War I—during which prosperity had reigned due to the demand for U.S. farm products and increased use of machinery in U.S. agriculture—was characterized by low prices and economic distress caused chiefly by a surplus of farm products. A so-called farm bloc was formed in Congress to secure legislation to relieve the economic plight of the farmer. The principal bill sponsored by the farm bloc, the McNary-Haugen Bill, designed to curb the production of surpluses of farm staples, was vetoed by Presidents Coolidge and Hoover; and the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, supported by Hoover and designed to promote the marketing of farm products and to provide for government purchases of certain crops to support their prices, failed to stem the decline in farm prices.

Regulating Public Utilities. 

In Harding's administration, the railroads, which had been in economic distress for some time because of growing competition from other means of transportation, such as improved waterways, oil pipelines, and motor-transport companies, also turned to the government for aid. The Transportation Act, passed in 1920, in some measure relieved the situation by providing for the unification of independent lines into large systems. In regard to public utilities, the federal government made initial attempts to regulate the rate for electric power charged by private companies operating across state lines. In 1920 Congress created the Federal Power Commission to license hydroelectric plants on navigable rivers, public lands, and Indian reservations. The problem of regulating public-utility companies that operated only within a state was met during the second and third decades of the 20th century in nearly every state by the appointment of a public service commission. Twice during the period 1920–32 Congress passed bills that would have enabled the federal government itself to enter the business of generating and selling electric power. President Coolidge, however, vetoed the bill sponsored by Senator George William Norris of Nebraska in 1928, which provided for a government-owned corporation to operate electric power facilities at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River, and in 1930 President Hoover vetoed a similar bill. (In 1933, in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Tennessee Valley Development Act was passed by Congress and signed by the president.)

Immigration and Labor. 

The question of regulating immigration into the U.S. also became important after World War I. In the 1920s Congress reversed the traditional U.S. policy of unrestricted immigration by passing two acts, one in 1921 and one in 1924, that considerably reduced European immigration. In labor circles the period 1920–32 was marked by the decline of trade unionism (the American Federation of Labor had about 4 million members in 1920, about 3 million in 1930, and about 2.5 million in 1932) and the growth of industrial unionism. The latter tendency culminated in 1935 in the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization, which in 1938 was constituted as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Prohibition. 

The most enduring controversial issue of the period 1920–32 was Prohibition. The movement to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the U.S. originated in the early 19th century and culminated with the ratification, in January 1919, of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Thus began an era of home brew, speakeasies, and gangster violence. In 1929 a presidential commission headed by former U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham concluded that federal enforcement of the antiliquor laws was a failure. Public sentiment, meanwhile, had steadily been turning away from the “drys,” and in February 1933 Congress passed and submitted to the states the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which gave the control of the liquor traffic back to the individual states; by December of that year, 36 states had ratified the amendment, and it was declared part of the Constitution.

The Crash of 1929. 

Absorbing as the Prohibition controversy was, public interest in the first year of the Hoover administration became diverted by an event that shook the very economic foundations of the nation, namely, the stock market panic of 1929. During the period of boom, marked by high wages and increased production and consumption of goods, which the country had enjoyed since World War I, many had developed a tendency to invest savings and earnings in speculative ventures, particularly the buying of stocks on margin—putting up as little as three percent of a stock's price in cash and borrowing the remainder from the broker. The booming demand for stocks and the prosperous state of the nation as a whole led to a general rise in the prices of securities, which in turn led to increased investments in them. The rise in stock prices reached its height in the so-called Hoover bull market during the first six months of the Hoover administration. In this period, individuals invested billions of dollars in the stock market, obtaining the money for such investments by borrowing from banks, mortgaging homes, and selling sound government securities, such as Liberty Bonds. In August 1929 stockbrokers were carrying on margin for their clients approximately 300 million shares of stock. By October 1929 the feverish wave of buying had exhausted itself and gave way to an equally feverish wave of selling. Prices dropped precipitately, and thousands of people lost all they had invested, which frequently meant complete financial ruin. On October 29 the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world, had its worst day of panic selling. By the end of the year declines in stock values reached $15 billion.

The Great Depression. 

The stock market panic preceded an economic depression that not only spread over the U.S. but in the early 1930s became worldwide. In the U.S., despite the optimistic statements of President Hoover and his secretary of the treasury, Andrew W. Mellon, that business was “fundamentally sound” and that a new era of prosperity was just about to begin, many factories closed, unemployment steadily increased, banks failed in growing numbers, and the prices of commodities steadily fell. The administration began to take steps to combat the crisis. Among the measures taken were the granting of emergency appropriations for farm relief and public works, modification of the rules of the Federal Reserve System to make it easier for people in business and farming to obtain credit, and the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), with assets of $2 billion, to make emergency loans to industries, railroads, insurance companies, and banks. Nevertheless, the economic depression steadily worsened during the remainder of the Hoover administration. By 1932 hundreds of banks had failed, hundreds of mills and factories had closed, mortgages on farms and houses were being foreclosed in large numbers, and more than 10 million workers were unemployed. The presidential campaign of 1932, in which the Democratic candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt, was waged on the issues of Prohibition and the economic crisis. The Democratic platform declared for outright repeal of the 18th Amendment and promised a “new deal” in economic and social matters to bring about recovery from the depression. The Republicans did not call for outright repeal and, in regard to the depression, warned against the danger to business and the national finances if the social and economic philosophies of the Democrats were substituted for the sound and conservative ideas of the Hoover administration. The Democrats won an overwhelming success in the election, carrying all but six states.

Foreign Affairs. 

(1920–32) In foreign relations, the administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were concerned principally with the problems of war debts due the U.S., the related reparations due from Germany to the Allied nations, and U.S. attempts to obtain international cooperation on measures that would bring about permanent world peace.

During World War I and shortly afterward, the U.S. government had lent a total of about $10 billion to the countries allied in the war against Germany, and by 1922 the Allies owed the U.S. this sum plus accumulated interest of $1 billion. Because the debtor nations claimed inability to pay the full amount owed, in 1922 Congress created the World War Foreign Debt Commission, which during the next four years negotiated agreements with the debtor nations that materially reduced their debts and provided for annual payments to be distributed over a period of 62 years. Most of the debtor nations made their annual payments contingent on the reparations payments made to them by Germany. When Germany in 1923 began to default on its reparations payments, the U.S. was instrumental in formulating plans, in 1924 and 1929, to help Germany pay by reducing the German obligations and extending credits to German industry. See REPARATIONS,.

During the period 1920–32 the U.S. attempted to bring about permanent world peace in three ways: by promoting a policy of international limitation of armaments; by cooperating with France in framing a pact to renounce war as an instrument of national policy; and by cooperating with the League of Nations. During this period the U.S. participated in four international conferences aimed at limiting armaments: the WASHINGTON CONFERENCE, (q.v.) of 1921–22, at which a five-power treaty was signed providing chiefly for a 10-year cessation of naval construction; the Geneva Conference held in 1927, at which the U.S., Great Britain, and Japan tried unsuccessfully to agree on further disarmament; the London Naval Conference of 1930; and a World Disarmament Conference at Geneva in 1932, which ended in failure in 1934. An earnest attempt to ensure world peace was the KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT, (q.v.) of 1928, initiated by Aristide Briand, then French foreign minister, and sponsored also by Frank B. Kellogg, then the U.S. secretary of state. Fifteen nations initially signed this agreement to renounce aggressive warfare and to settle disputes by peaceful means. The U.S. Senate ratified the pact in 1929. Although the U.S. refused to enter the League of Nations in 1920, during the following 12 years it cooperated with the league's nonpolitical agencies and with its efforts to bring about general disarmament and permanent world peace.

THE NEW DEAL 

The broad economic and social policies of the Roosevelt administration and the enactments of Congress, usually initiated or sponsored by Roosevelt, that implemented these policies are collectively known as the NEW DEAL, (q.v.). The purpose of the New Deal was twofold: recovery from the economic depression that had followed the financial crash of 1929 and stabilization of the national economy to prevent severe economic crises in the future.

Relief Measures. 

The administration at once set up several agencies to bring relief to the unemployed and needy. Relief funds for the unemployed were distributed through state and local agencies and through several federal agencies that created temporary jobs. Farmers, industry, and labor were aided. During this period both agriculture and labor were basically changed through such legislation as the Agricultural Adjustment Acts, passed in 1933 and 1938, and the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935. Through the Rural Electrification Administration, established in 1936, power lines were brought to many sparsely populated areas of the U.S., resulting in modernization of rural living conditions and bringing modern appliances and equipment to farms and small towns. Housing legislation included the institution of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, and the U.S. Housing Authority. By the Social Security Act, passed in 1935 and amended in 1939, the U.S. took a great step toward providing economic security for its population; this act provides old-age benefits, unemployment compensation, and welfare services for mothers, children, the aged, and the blind. See SOCIAL SECURITY,; SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.

The earliest sufferers from the crash of 1929 were investors in securities and depositors in banks; the interests of these groups were also considered by the New Deal. The Federal Securities Act (1933), through federal supervision of new issues of securities and other means, protected investors against fraudulent practices; this protection was broadened by an act (1934) that provided for a SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (q.v.) to regulate stock exchanges. To protect bank depositors, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act (1933), which gave the president the power to reorganize insolvent banks, and the Banking Act of 1933, the principal feature of which was the insurance of bank deposits by the FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION (q.v.). The Roosevelt administration also adopted a monetary policy designed to generally raise prices of commodities in order to counteract the steady fall in such prices that had begun with the crash of 1929. The chief feature of the president's mildly inflationary monetary policy was the devaluation, by executive order in 1934, of the dollar down to 59.06 of its former value in terms of gold; at the same time he created a stabilization fund of $2 billion to ensure that the dollar held this value in international exchange.

The New Deal also aided large-scale business. Making extensive use of the RFC, established by President Hoover, the Roosevelt administration extended large credit to railroads, building-loan companies, banks, agricultural-credit corporations, and insurance companies; between 1932 and 1937 the government lent more than $6.5 billion through the RFC. To raise the money necessary to finance the New Deal program, the government slightly increased taxes on incomes, gifts, estates, corporate earnings, and excess profits by the Revenue Act of 1935, and also borrowed money. U.S. gross public debt grew from $22.5 billion in 1933 to $40.44 billion in 1939.

Roosevelt Reelected. 

The program of the New Deal, with its unprecedented broadening of both the legislative and executive powers and its enlargement of the national government's role in the economic and social life of the nation, brought unlimited praise from some who believed that the New Deal, by modifying the U.S. free-enterprise system, had saved the country from adopting, possibly by revolutionary means, either a socialist or Fascist system. The New Deal was severely condemned by others, however, who saw in Roosevelt's policies only a dangerous curtailment of the rights assured by the free-enterprise system. In the 1936 election, in which Roosevelt ran against Gov. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, the Republican nominee, Roosevelt won one of the greatest political victories in U.S. history; he carried every state except Maine and Vermont. In addition, black voters, following up their major switch to the Democrats in the 1934 elections, voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt.

The second term of President Roosevelt, in which he continued the policies of the New Deal, was marked particularly by a controversy concerning the Supreme Court. The Court had held unconstitutional, in part or in whole, several administration measures, including the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the Farm Mortgage Act of 1934, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Roosevelt proposed a bill to enlarge the Court from 9 to 15 members in the hope of lessening Court opposition to New Deal legislation, but the Senate would not pass it. Between 1937 and 1941, however, eight justices resigned or died, and the president appointed others more favorable to the New Deal.

Roosevelt's Foreign Policy. 

The foreign policy of the U.S. during the Roosevelt administration initially was concerned with efforts to extend U.S. foreign trade, especially in Latin America; then with the problems created by the war between Japan and China, which began in 1937, and the outbreak of World War II in 1939; and finally with the military and diplomatic efforts necessitated by the U.S. entering the war in 1941.

Good Neighbor Policy. 

Extension of U.S. foreign trade was stimulated by the organization in 1934 of the export-import banks (see EXPORT-IMPORT BANK OF THE UNITED STATES,), through which the government was to make loans to firms intending to increase their sales in foreign countries, and by reciprocal trade agreements between the U.S. and foreign countries for lowering of tariff duties. Between 1934 (when Congress authorized the making of such agreements by the executive without congressional approval) and 1939, Secretary of State Cordell Hull concluded 21 such reciprocal trade agreements. A policy, popularly known as the Good Neighbor Policy, of amicable relations with the countries of Latin America resulted in considerable extension of American trade there. Among the measures taken were the abrogation in 1934 of the Platt Amendment, by which the U.S. since 1902 had exercised a measure of control in the international affairs of Cuba, and the ending of U.S. control over the customs system of the Dominican Republic. When Mexico in 1938 expropriated U.S. properties, Secretary of State Hull merely asked that adequate compensation be paid.

Response to war threats. 

Meanwhile the U.S. had adopted measures to keep it out of the war that had been threatening to break out in Europe since the coming to power in Germany of the National Socialist (Nazi) party in 1933. To prevent Americans from becoming financially interested in European conflicts, the Johnson Act of 1934 prohibited the U.S. sale of the securities of any nation in default on its obligations to the U.S. In addition, three neutrality acts (1935–37) prohibited actions by U.S. citizens that might aid a foreign belligerent; in particular, an embargo was placed on the export of “arms, munitions, and implements of war.”

Despite the policy of neutrality, the moral feeling as well as the material interests of the U.S. forced it to take a stand against the aggressive acts of Japan in Asia and of Germany and Italy in Europe. In 1937 President Roosevelt proposed that aggressive nations be “quarantined” by means of an economic boycott; he later declared that his policy of opposition to totalitarian dictatorship should be implemented by all means “short of war.”

Aid to Allies. 

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, U.S. aid to the nations resisting Fascist aggression became definite and vigorous. Late in 1939 Congress partly repealed the arms embargo imposed by the neutrality acts; France and Great Britain could henceforth purchase war supplies in the U.S. In September 1940 the U.S. government transferred to the British 50 old destroyers, receiving in return long leases for U.S. naval and air bases on British possessions in the western hemisphere. The German successes in the spring of 1940 led to immediate measures by the U.S. to strengthen its defenses.

In 1940 Congress authorized loans to Latin American countries for defense purposes. The U.S. and Canada set up the Permanent Joint Board to provide for North American defense. Domestic defense was in the meantime accelerated by a congressional appropriation of $18 billion to construct a U.S. navy large and strong enough to be successful against any possible combination of foreign navies and to raise an army of 1.2 million; by the passage in September 1940 of the first U.S. peacetime conscription act; and by measures to mobilize the industrial resources of the country for possible war.

Roosevelt's Third Election. 

In 1940 the Democratic party nominated Roosevelt for a third term, breaking the precedent of only two terms for a president on the ground that changing administrations in so critical a period would be inadvisable. He decisively defeated the nominee of the Republican party, Wendell L. Willkie.

After Roosevelt's reelection, Congress in March 1941 passed the LEND-LEASE, (q.v.) Act, which empowered the president to transfer, sell, lend, or lease war supplies to any nation, the defense of which was vital to U.S. security. Toward the end of July the U.S. State Department forbade the export to Japan of war materials, and it later rejected an agreement of friendship proposed by Japan on condition that the U.S. acknowledge the Japanese conquest of China.

An alliance between Great Britain and the U.S. was foreshadowed by the announcement in August 1941 of the ATLANTIC CHARTER, (q.v.), a statement of the eight bases for peace that the two countries desired; the charter was drawn up by President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. The year 1941 was marked also by a heated nationwide debate between the “isolationists,” who opposed both U.S. participation in World War II and aid to Great Britain, and the “interventionists,” who felt that victory over the Axis powers was essential for U.S. security and were prepared for U.S. entry into the war at an appropriate time.

WORLD WAR II AND AFTERMATH 

On Dec. 7, 1941, while a special Japanese envoy was in Washington, ostensibly on a mission to negotiate an understanding over affairs in the Pacific, the Japanese government launched a surprise bombing attack by air on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. On the following day, at the request of the president, Congress declared a state of war between the U.S. and Japan. On December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. See WORLD WAR II,.

The Home Front. 

U.S. mobilization for the war was carried out through a number of agencies in virtually every area of the economy. The National Defense Research Committee directed scientific and technical research for military purposes. Industrial conversion from consumer to wartime production was overseen by the War Production Board. The Office of Price Administration attempted to control prices, administer rationing, and check profiteering. After 1943 these agencies were organized under the Office of War Mobilization, which assumed complete control over prices and the issuance of priorities. Wages, rents, and food prices were strictly regulated, and scarce items such as meat, sugar, and gasoline were rationed. The newly created defense plants provided employment for women and especially for blacks, who, despite continuing segregation in the armed forces and elsewhere, made significant economic advances during this period. (After A. Philip Randolph had threatened in 1941 to lead a march on Washington, Roosevelt ordered the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee.) To overcome a shortage of labor in the rapidly expanding economy, the War Labor Board limited wage increases and obtained no-strike pledges from the unions. The war economy was financed by increased taxation and by a rise in the national debt from $49 billion in 1941 to $280 billion in 1945. Gross governmental disregard for civil liberties was manifested in the relocation and internment of 112,000 residents of Japanese ancestry (both U.S. citizens and resident aliens), ostensibly to prevent sabotage and subversion.

Allied Conferences. 

President Roosevelt, in addition to supervising the entire U.S. war effort, made extraordinary efforts to cooperate in the conduct of the war with the other powers fighting against the Axis and at the same time to lay the foundations for peace. His diplomatic efforts took the form principally of a series of conferences, chiefly with Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain and Premier Joseph Stalin of the USSR. The conferences included meetings with Churchill from 1941 to 1943 at Washington, Québec, and Casablanca, where Roosevelt discussed the military conduct of the war and proposed the principle of unconditional surrender by the Axis. At a conference in 1943 at Cairo (see CAIRO CONFERENCE,), he planned the prosecution of the war against Japan with Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China. At Tehran, Iran (see TEHRAN CONFERENCE,), in 1943, with Churchill and Stalin, he formulated plans for a concerted attack on Germany; at Yalta, USSR (see YALTA CONFERENCE,), in 1945, with the same principals, decisions were made to divide Germany into zones of occupation, to establish the UN, and to bring the Soviet Union into the war against Japan. Several other conferences in 1945 laid the foundation for the organization of the UN and other forms of worldwide cooperation after the war; notable among them were the meetings in Moscow in 1943; at Bretton Woods, N.H. (see BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE,); and at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., at which basic plans were adopted for organizing the UN.

Roosevelt's Fourth Election and Death. 

In the presidential campaign of 1944, Roosevelt ran for a fourth term, defeating the Republican candidate, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. His long administration was notable for its economic reforms, its successful conduct of the war, and its establishment of a basis for world peace. These policies formed the foundation of the new administration when Roosevelt was succeeded by Vice-President Harry S. Truman. The new president was essentially a political moderate who had distinguished himself in the Senate investigations of wartime waste and inefficiency in military spending. His first problems as president were the conclusion of the war and the establishment of world peace. German resistance was virtually at an end, and on May 8, 1945, Germany formally surrendered to the Allies. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theater, U.S. forces were fighting difficult but successful campaigns in the advance toward the Japanese home islands. In the atmosphere of impending victory, a conference of the UN met in San Francisco to draft a charter for a permanent world organization to ensure lasting peace.

Conclusion of the War. 

The increasing difficulties in Soviet-U.S. relations, however, became evident at the POTSDAM CONFERENCE, (q.v.) in Germany in July, where agreements relating to the final division of Germany were reached. Some Americans, led by President Truman, had become convinced that Stalin was not living up to his agreements at Yalta to hold free elections in Romania and Bulgaria, and Truman therefore demanded that the Russians honor their pledges. The spirit of wartime cooperation increasingly gave way to mutual suspicion, misunderstanding, and recrimination, leading to the era of conflict known as the cold war.

In August, a momentous event shook the world. Throughout the war, Britain and the U.S. had carried on an intense scientific project to develop an atomic bomb. Truman now authorized the use of this bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He made this controversial decision in hopes of inducing a Japanese surrender and thus avoiding heavy casualties in an invasion of Japan. The bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945; the Japanese surrendered on Aug. 14.

Economic Affairs. 

With the conclusion of hostilities, reconversion of the U.S. economy to peacetime conditions and demobilization of the troops became the paramount issues in U.S. domestic policies. To facilitate the process, the Truman administration formulated a 21-point program calling for full employment, labor-management cooperation, heavy federal housing subsidies, increased unemployment compensation, extension of price controls, federal aid to education, guarantees of civil rights, increased minimum wage, and continued foreign aid. The president also recommended unification of the armed services and universal military training. Many of these programs were vigorously opposed by the Republican-dominated Congress, and congressional rejection of price controls led to an 18 percent increase in the cost of living in 1946. The economic situation became further complicated when almost 5 million workers struck for wage increases to meet the rising costs of living. In 1947 Congress responded to this strike activity by passing, over the president's veto, the Labor-Management Relations Act, known as the Taft-Hartley Act, which placed limitations on the freedom to strike. See NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT.

Security Affairs. 

Despite these domestic problems, the U.S. continued its unprecedented participation in international affairs, through membership in the UN and other groups and through Allied conduct of war crimes trials of former enemy leaders, chiefly Germans and Japanese (see WAR CRIMES TRIALS,). In August 1946 the U.S. joined the International Court of Justice. Major diplomatic questions included the U.S. proposal for UN control of atomic energy and atomic weapons. This proposal, known as the Baruch Plan, after the U.S. financier Bernard M. Baruch, its chief proponent, called for the turning over of atomic bombs and secrets to the UN, whereas Soviet leaders demanded the destruction of existing atomic weapons prior to or simultaneously with the creation of UN control. In 1946 atomic control in the U.S. was transferred from the army to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission. The National Security Act of 1947 unified the armed services under a secretary of defense and the joint chiefs of staff. It also established the National Security Council to plan and coordinate defense policies and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to gather and report strategic information from abroad.

Containing Communism. 

In 1947, in an effort to halt, or contain, the advance of communism in Europe, and especially in Greece and Turkey, President Truman announced the policy known as the Truman Doctrine, by which the U.S. furnished military and economic aid to countries threatened by aggression and subversion. An important adjunct of this policy was the Marshall Plan proposed in June 1947 by Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Officially designated the EUROPEAN RECOVERY PROGRAM (q.v.), it was a broad program of economic rehabilitation. The policy of containment was expanded to the western hemisphere in 1947, when the U.S. joined with 18 other American nations in signing the Rio Treaty, promising mutual defense and assistance against aggression by an American or a non-American state on any of the signatory nations. In 1948 the U.S. agreed to the establishment of the Organization of American States (OAS) to settle disputes among the nations of the Americas. As part of his worldwide campaign against communism, President Truman also implemented the POINT FOUR PROGRAM, (q.v.) to aid developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The Berlin Airlift. 

The Soviet Union responded to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan with the formation of a new Communist International (the Cominform) and a tightening of its control of Czechoslovakia. The U.S. then resolved to strengthen West Germany against communism. In February 1948 a plan for the economic merger of the British and U.S. occupation zones went into effect following its acceptance by the Germans in those zones, and a conference, attended by representatives of the U.S., Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and Great Britain, was held in London to discuss the eventual political and economic merger of the French, British, and U.S. occupation zones. In reaction to this violation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, the Soviet delegation withdrew from the Four-Power Allied Control Council and took steps to establish a Soviet-dominated East German state. On June 24, 1948, following an agreement by the nations that had participated in the London Conference on the creation of a West German state, and the establishment of a West German currency by the Western occupying powers, the Soviets banned all rail traffic between Berlin and West Germany. Because water and roadway transportation into the city had been suspended by an earlier Soviet action, the British and U.S. occupation authorities organized a system of air transport, known as the Berlin airlift, to supply the Western-occupied sectors of the city. In April 1949 the foreign ministers of the U.S., Great Britain, and France completed plans for combining their occupation zones of West Germany into a federal republic. Also in April the U.S., Canada, and ten Western European nations arranged a guarantee of mutual defense and assistance in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known as NATO.

Truman Wins Election. 

In domestic matters, Truman proposed a program of civil rights legislation, including laws against lynching and the abolition of the poll tax. He also issued the executive order that led to the eventual desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. All this cost him the support of many southern Democrats. When he was nominated for president at the Democratic national convention in 1948, many of these southerners left the Democratic party, forming a group known as the States' Rights Democrats, or Dixiecrat party, with Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their presidential candidate. Another new faction, the Progressive party, which viewed Truman's containment policy as a threat to world peace and urged greater efforts toward cooperation with the Soviet Union, named former Vice-President Henry A. Wallace as its candidate for the presidency. The Republicans renominated Dewey, whose victory in the election was regarded as virtually certain. Truman, however, won; Dewey ran second, Thurmond was third, and Wallace was fourth. The Democratic party also won a majority of the contested seats in the House and Senate.

Truman, in beginning his first full term, sought support for a legislative program known as the Fair Deal and comprising government control of credit exports and rents, an increase in taxes, government support of low-rent housing, government-sponsored health insurance, universal military training for men, and an extension of the executive power to enter into reciprocal trade agreements with other nations. Although most of these proposals were defeated in Congress, Truman was able to gain congressional approval for an expanded federal housing program, minimum wage increases, and enlarged social security benefits.

Turmoil over China. 

Truman's policy of containment of communism, although generally successful in Europe, was less effective in Asia, except in Japan, where the military occupation under Gen. Douglas MacArthur successfully built a stable democratic government. In 1951 a peace treaty ended the U.S. occupation, and Japan became the firmest U.S. ally in Asia. In China, however, the government of Chiang Kai-shek, which had been supported by the U.S., was unable to withstand the advance of Communist forces under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). By the end of 1949 government troops had been overwhelmingly defeated, and Chiang led his forces into exile on Taiwan. The triumphant Mao formed the Chinese People's Republic. This development caused great turmoil in the U.S., when critics charged that the Truman administration had failed to support Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists. A further disturbance of public opinion occurred in September 1949, when Truman announced that the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb. Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson stated, however, that the loss of the U.S. nuclear monopoly would produce no fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy and that the U.S. would continue to press for adoption of its nuclear control plan.

The Korean War. 

The events in China and the resulting criticism had made the Truman administration sensitive to further Communist expansion in Asia, and in June 1950, when South Korea was invaded by the forces of Communist North Korea, Truman announced that the U.S. would intervene to assist the South Koreans, and the UN, in an unprecedented move, sponsored military action. On Nov. 26, 1950, the Chinese Communists officially entered the war, and Gen. MacArthur, in command of the UN forces, subsequently urged that he be allowed to bomb Chinese bases beyond the Yalu River (the Chinese border) and deploy Chiang's troops against the Communists. Truman rejected these suggestions, however, and when MacArthur became increasingly outspoken in his criticisms, the president relieved him of his command, despite widespread popular support for the general. This quarrel represented a basic disagreement over tactics in the age of containment. MacArthur and his supporters believed that war must be waged only in the name of ultimate victory. Truman felt that a larger view of world affairs was essential and that nuclear warfare was to be used only as a last resort.

The conflict in Korea produced profound repercussions on U.S. domestic affairs, including the doubling of military and related expenditures. The cost of living rose more than 5 percent during the first six months of the war, wage and price controls were established, and on Dec. 16, 1950, Truman established the Office of Defense Mobilization to supervise the war effort.

The McCarthy Era. 

The Korean War also led to severe psychological dislocations as concern about communism within the U.S. intensified. As early as 1947 President Truman had set up a nationwide system of loyalty boards to investigate government employees. The government also prosecuted 11 leaders of the Communist party, U.S.A., under the Smith Act of 1940, which prohibited groups from conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. In 1950 Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which established a permanent Subversive Activities Control Board to follow Communist activities in the U.S. and barred from admission into the country any person who had been a member of Communist organizations. Truman vetoed the bill on the ground that it represented “a suppression of ideas in disregard to ideals which are the fundamental basis of our free society,” but his veto was overridden by Congress. Considerable controversy over the degree of Communist influence in the U.S. was aroused by the activities of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, who would put his stamp on an era of investigations of communist influence in the U.S. See UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON.

The 22d Amendment to the Constitution, stating that no person may serve more than two terms as president, became law on Feb. 27, 1951. Also in that year congressional opposition to Truman's domestic programs increased, and the severe economic inflation produced by the war resulted in serious strikes in several major industries. On August 8 the president placed the entire steel industry under federal control to prevent a threatened nationwide strike, but the steel companies challenged the constitutionality of this action, and the Supreme Court declared the seizure unconstitutional. The steel mills were returned to the owners, and a 54-day strike followed. Evidence of serious corruption within the government and Truman's apparent reluctance to act against the guilty parties further undermined public confidence in the Democratic administration.

THE EISENHOWER ERA 

In July 1952 the Republican party nominated Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Richard M. Nixon of California as candidates for president and vice-president. The Democrats named Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois and Senator John Sparkman (1899–1985) of Alabama. Eisenhower won easily, and the Republicans captured control of Congress. Eisenhower's personal prestige contributed heavily to the Republican victory, as did frustration over the Korean War and fear of communism at home. The Republicans did well in the suburbs, which were growing rapidly as many young families moved into new homes financed with low-interest mortgages backed by federal agencies.

Eisenhower's Policies. 

In contrast to Roosevelt and Truman, Eisenhower believed that the presidency should involve considerable delegation of authority, and he therefore granted much independence to his cabinet, which was composed largely of business executives. Despite its conservative outlook, the administration made no effort to repeal New Deal legislation. Unlike the Democrats, however, Eisenhower endeavored to limit the role of national government, calling for greater local control of governmental affairs. In addition, he reduced taxes and pressed for drastic reductions in federal spending in order to balance the budget.

Among important actions taken by the new administration were the removal of all wage and price controls, the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the expansion of social security benefits. Domestic problems faced by the administration included rising living costs, budget deficits, and falling prices for agricultural commodities. In its efforts to deal with the budget deficit, the administration attempted to cut back federal spending and submitted a balanced budget. In 1953 a moderate recession began, lasting until 1955. The recession was brought to an end by the Revenue Act of 1954, which reduced taxes and eased credit. Eisenhower was also forced to increase federal spending through aid to highway and school construction. Although the economy responded favorably to these actions and expanded at a modest rate, the crisis in agriculture nevertheless worsened as huge surpluses developed despite flexible price-support and soil-conservation programs.

The Hunt for Communists. 

After the elections of 1952, public attention centered increasingly on the activities of Senator McCarthy. Eisenhower was reluctant to enter the McCarthy controversy actively, and the senator took advantage of the administration's silence to augment his own power, conducting numerous investigations into alleged Communist infiltration in government agencies, notably the State Department. Many similar arbitrary investigations were also carried on throughout the nation by local authorities. When McCarthy extended his inquiries to the U.S. Army, his irresponsible methods and accusations prompted the Senate to censure him in December 1954. In the meantime the Supreme Court moved to correct some of the worst abuses in civil liberties of the postwar period, and several of the Court's rulings limited public investigations into the private beliefs and associations of individuals. The fear instilled in people's minds by the McCarthy witch-hunts, however, would linger throughout the 1950s.

The Civil Rights Movement. 

The most urgent domestic issue of the period was the struggle of American blacks to end segregation and secure their full rights as citizens. Congress had opposed Truman's moderate civil rights program, and although the Eisenhower administration completed the desegregation of the government and armed forces, it was unwilling to initiate more radical programs. Blacks, led by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (q.v.), increasingly turned to the courts for assistance. On May 17, 1954, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren unanimously outlawed racial segregation in public schools, thus reversing the principle of “separate but equal” that had been the basis of black-white relations since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. Subsequent decisions in 1955–56 called on local authorities to submit plans for desegregation and also ended racial segregation in intrastate transportation. In many southern states, however, attempts were made to circumvent the Court's rulings, notably in September 1957, when Gov. Orval E. Faubus (1910–94) of Arkansas ordered the National Guard to prevent nine black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock. On September 23, following attacks by whites on black students and adults, President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops into Little Rock to restore order and to help black students attend school without fear of angry mobs. Despite advances in the border states, progress in desegregation was slow in the South as a whole, and by September 1960 only 765 of the 6676 southern school districts had been desegregated.

Meanwhile, many blacks became increasingly active in the civil rights movement. In December 1955, the clergyman Martin Luther King, Jr., led a highly effective boycott that resulted in desegregation of the bus system in Montgomery, Ala. Subsequently, a form of protest later known as the sit-in was widely used throughout the South to desegregate lunch counters and other public facilities. Largely as a result of such activities Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, establishing a Civil Rights Commission to investigate the denial of voting rights or equal protection of the laws. A subsequent act of 1960 authorized the courts to appoint officials to protect the voting rights of blacks and made the obstruction of court orders by threat of violence a federal offense.

Eisenhower Reelected. 

Throughout his first administration, whatever the success of his policies, Eisenhower remained an immensely popular figure, although he was unable to transfer his personal popularity to the Republican party in general; in 1954 the party lost control of Congress. In 1956, despite a heart attack, Eisenhower announced that he would run for a second term. The Democrats, who renominated Stevenson for the presidency and chose Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee as his running mate, campaigned vigorously for a “new America” and for an end to the draft and to tests of the hydrogen bomb. In the balloting, Eisenhower carried 41 states. The Democrats, however, retained control of both houses of Congress.

In January 1957 President Eisenhower submitted to Congress the third consecutive balanced budget of his administration. Early in 1958 a nationwide recession began, and by midyear the downward trend of the economy had assumed major proportions. The number of unemployed persons rose in June to more than 5 million, the highest level since World War II. The reluctance of the administration to move swiftly to curb the recession, as well as evidence of financial corruption within the administration, led to a major Democratic victory in the congressional elections of 1958. By the end of 1958 the recession had been brought under control, and the value of U.S. manufactures reached the level of the prerecession period. In international finance, however, the excess of U.S. overseas expenditures in relation to its receipts resulted in a diminishing of U.S. gold reserves, prompting Eisenhower to order overseas military spending reduced. On Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska was admitted to the Union as the 49th state, and Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state on August 21.

Foreign Affairs Under Eisenhower. 

In the conduct of foreign affairs, Eisenhower relied heavily on his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. A veteran diplomat, Dulles believed that the “containment policy” was too passive and preferred the more dynamic policy of “massive retaliation” to be directed at either Moscow or Beijing in case of further Communist aggression anywhere in the world. His apparent willingness to go “to the brink of war” to “roll back” communism and “liberate” Eastern Europe earned his foreign policy the designation of “brinkmanship.”

Although the concept of massive retaliation implied a reduction in conventional military forces, even greater emphasis was placed on nuclear armaments and delivery systems. The so-called arms race, which accompanied the cold war, assumed formidable dimensions when the U.S. exploded the first hydrogen bomb in 1952 and the USSR duplicated the feat six months later. Thereafter, while work continued on nuclear weapons and atomic tests, both sides concentrated on perfecting the means of delivering these bombs. New long-range aircraft were developed, and by 1957 both nations had workable intercontinental ballistic missiles. As a result, despite Eisenhower's desire to reduce federal spending, defense and defense-related expenditures constituted approximately 50 percent of the annual budgets of his administration.

Developments in Southeast Asia. 

One specific accomplishment in foreign policy achieved by Eisenhower was the arrangement, on July 27, 1953, of an armistice in the Korean War. The president increased military and economic aid to the French in Indochina, but he rejected suggestions by Dulles for the tactical use of nuclear weapons and the intervention of U.S. troops in behalf of the French against the Communist dominated Vietnamese nationalists. An accord reached in Geneva in 1954 (which the U.S. refused to sign) resulted in the partition of Indochina and an eventual intensification of conflict in the region.

In 1954, in an attempt to prevent further Communist expansion in Asia, Dulles formed the SOUTHEAST ASIA TREATY ORGANIZATION (SEATO), (q.v.), which included the U.S., Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan. The refusal of other Asian nations to join weakened the pact and prompted Dulles to condemn the neutralist policies of many developing nations. Nevertheless, Dulles followed a similar strategy in the Middle East, where the Baghdad Pact (later Central Treaty Organization) was formed in 1955 for the military defense of the region. A further consequence of the setback in Indochina was the strengthening of U.S. ties with Nationalist China (Taiwan), and in January 1955 Eisenhower obtained congressional approval for the defense of Taiwan and other Chinese islands.

Developments in Europe. 

A so-called peace offensive by the Soviet Union followed the death of Stalin in 1953. One significant result of this movement was an East-West agreement on Austria, which became fully sovereign but neutral in July 1955, as Soviet and Western occupation forces were withdrawn. A similar Soviet proposal for Germany was rejected by the U.S. Also in July Eisenhower met with the British, French, and Soviet heads of state at a summit conference in Geneva, but no progress was made on the questions of German reunification, disarmament, and other issues. In late 1956, following a denunciation of Stalin by the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, anti-Soviet uprisings occurred in Poland and Hungary, and Khrushchev dispatched Russian troops to suppress the Hungarian revolt. The U.S. condemned this action and admitted many Hungarian refugees to the U.S. but made no effort to intervene directly in the crisis.

Developments in the Middle East. 

Also during this period a major crisis developed in the Middle East. In July 1956 the U.S., disturbed by apparent Communist influences on the Egyptian government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, withdrew an offer to extend financial assistance to Egypt for the construction of a dam at Aswan on the Nile River. A week later the Egyptian government assumed control of the Suez Canal, which had previously been operated by international authority, and announced that revenues from the operation of the canal would be used to finance construction of the dam. In October the armed forces of Israel, France, and Great Britain invaded Egypt in order to restore international control of the canal. In the UN Security Council, however, the U.S. government moved to censure the invaders and to demand the withdrawal of their troops. Growing fear of communism in the Middle East led Congress to adopt a joint resolution in March 1957, providing that U.S. military and economic aid might be supplied to threatened countries in the area that requested help. The resolution, which was intended to supplement other U.S. defensive arrangements, became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. The doctrine was subsequently invoked to assist governments in Jordan and in Lebanon, where two battalions of U.S. Marines were landed near Beirut on July 15 and 16, 1958, to prevent Communist intervention in a rebellion then in progress in that country.

Developments in space. 

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched an 83-kg (184-lb) earth satellite called Sputnik 1, and a second Soviet satellite carrying a living dog and weighing 507 kg (1120 lb) soon followed. The launchings won almost universal praise in the U.S. and the rest of the world as outstanding scientific achievements. At the same time, U.S. authorities recognized that the Soviet satellites, besides having propaganda value, reflected significant Soviet advances in the design and construction of rocket-propelled ballistic missiles. The Soviet achievement therefore provoked nationwide debate, and many public figures urged a congressional probe of alleged U.S. backwardness in rocket and missile research and advocated sweeping reforms in the educational system to increase scientific personnel. The U.S. missile program was intensified, and in January 1958 the U.S. Army launched the first U.S. earth satellite, Explorer 1. 

Clashes with China and the USSR. 

Confrontations with Communist China and the Soviet Union continued throughout 1958. Early in September the Chinese Communists threatened the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu off mainland China. After a prolonged bombardment and repeated threats of invasion by the Chinese Communists, Eisenhower stated that the U.S. was determined to prevent Communist seizure of the islands. In November Khrushchev demanded that the West negotiate an agreement for the unification of Berlin, proposing that West Berlin be made a “free city” independent of both East and West Germany. He threatened to relinquish Soviet authority in East Berlin to the East German government if a final settlement were not reached within six months, but the proposal was rejected by the West. Tensions eased, however, when Vice-President Nixon visited Russia and Poland in the summer of 1959, and Khrushchev subsequently toured the U.S., agreeing to postpone a settlement of the Berlin question. On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Russia while on a spy mission. Two weeks later, at the Paris summit conference, Khrushchev demanded that Eisenhower formally apologize for this violation of Soviet air space. When Eisenhower refused, the conference was terminated. In Latin America, growing resentment against U.S. policies became especially evident in Cuba, where a revolution led by Fidel Castro resulted in the establishment of a Communist government. When the U.S. refused to grant Castro a loan in 1959, he turned to the Soviet Union for economic assistance, and the Eisenhower administration severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961.

THE KENNEDY YEARS 

In July 1960, the Democrats nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for president and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas for vice-president. The Republicans nominated Vice-President Nixon for president and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate. Nixon ran on the record of the Eisenhower administration, whereas Kennedy criticized the conservative tendencies of the Republicans and promised a New Frontier. The presidential campaign was highlighted by a series of television debates between the two candidates. Kennedy was elected, becoming the first Roman Catholic and, at the age of 43, the youngest person ever to be elected to the presidency; Theodore Roosevelt had been 42 when he succeeded to the office.

Economic Policies. 

In his inaugural address, President Kennedy called for social justice in domestic affairs and for a new era of forceful negotiations in foreign policy. His first economic proposals were designed to counteract the effects of the recession by providing for increased federal spending and by establishing wage-price guidelines for business and labor. Other measures furnished aid to economically depressed areas and increased the minimum wage for most workers engaged in interstate commerce. To remedy the drain on U.S. gold reserves, caused largely by the continuing unfavorable balance of international trade, the administration imposed a restriction on spending by U.S. military personnel abroad and procured agreements by several foreign countries to advance repayment of various obligations owed to the U.S. Stressing the need for a U.S. trade policy to meet the challenge of the rapidly developing European Community (now EUROPEAN UNION, q.v.), Kennedy obtained authorization to cut U.S. tariffs on most imports by 50 percent over five years and to abolish tariffs on selected goods. Many of his domestic programs, however, including proposals for a department of urban affairs and a plan of medical care for the aged, were defeated in Congress. In April 1962, seeking to control inflation, Kennedy forced several of the leading steel companies to rescind a price increase. This action, which included a public denunciation of the increase and the threat of antitrust prosecutions, was considered by some as the cause of a business recession that lasted until 1963. Among the principal items in Kennedy's legislative program for that year was a substantial tax cut to stimulate the economy.

Civil Rights Activities. 

Civil rights problems were a major concern of the Kennedy administration. The president's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, pressed vigorously for an end to segregation in schools and for protection of minority voting rights. A major racial incident occurred in the fall of 1962, when the attempt of a black student, James Meredith (1933–    ), to register at the University of Mississippi resulted in a campus riot. To restore order, Kennedy placed the Mississippi National Guard under federal authority and ordered it to patrol the campus. Kennedy also sent federal marshals to enforce desegregation at the University of Alabama, despite the active opposition of Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama. Other racial violence included the murder of the civil rights worker Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., and the killing of four black girls in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala. Blacks and their white supporters continued their demonstrations against violence and discrimination, notably in a gathering of more than 200,000 persons in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. At this rally the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. Largely as a result of these events, President Kennedy recommended broad civil rights legislation to outlaw discrimination in voting, education, and most areas of public accommodation and employment. The measure was delayed in Congress throughout 1963. On March 26, 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts could review claims that state apportionment laws prevented equal weight being given to the votes of all citizens. This decision brought about a reapportionment of voting districts in the many states where rural districts had held political dominance over more populous urban areas. Also in 1962 the court ruled against the use of prayers and devotional readings in public schools.

External Affairs. 

In his foreign policies, Kennedy sought to formulate a new approach toward communism. With the assistance of his secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, the president substituted a policy of “flexible response” for that of “massive retaliation.” He proposed extensive preparation for a limited war, with an expansion of conventional military forces and a further development of U.S. missile systems. In April 1961 Kennedy authorized an invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro Cuban exiles that had been planned under the Eisenhower administration; the invasion attempt was turned back at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of the island, and most of the invaders were killed or captured. Kennedy was subsequently confronted with new Soviet demands on Berlin at a meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, and in the months that followed Khrushchev revived his demand that Berlin be made a free city. In August the construction of a wall separating East Berlin from the West was begun. The Soviets also resumed nuclear testing. Kennedy responded by placing the U.S. military on alert and ordering resumption of nuclear testing. By 1964 the U.S. had tripled its missile forces.

In Latin America, Kennedy worked to reverse the Truman-Eisenhower policy of military rather than economic aid, initiating the Alliance for Progress, a program that offered Latin American nations $20 billion to modernize their economies. The PEACE CORPS, (q.v.), created on Sept. 22, 1961, was another attempt to improve the U.S. image in Latin America and other areas of the world. It sent teams of young Americans to work with people, share their way of life, and assist in such development activities as road building and improvement of farming methods.

The missile crisis. 

A major confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began on Oct. 22, 1962, when Kennedy announced that Soviet-supplied offensive missile bases were being built in Cuba and demanded that the USSR dismantle and remove the weapons. At the same time, he declared that U.S. naval forces would enforce a quarantine of the island, intercepting and inspecting cargo on ships bound for Cuba to determine whether it included offensive weapons. The OAS nations solidly supported the U.S. stand. For several days, war seemed possible, but at the end of a week Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the bases and permit the U.S. on-site inspection in return for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba. Although Cuba refused to permit the inspection, U.S. aerial reconnaissance revealed that the bases were being disassembled. In late December prisoners captured during the 1961 invasion attempt were released by Castro in exchange for American food and medical supplies valued at about $53 million.

Atomic test ban. 

Capitalizing on a Soviet desire to ease world tensions in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis and on the deteriorating relations between the USSR and Communist China, the U.S. in 1963 renewed negotiations with the latter. On August 5 of that year the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union concluded a treaty to ban atomic testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater. Underground tests were not banned. In addition, a “hot line” for communication between Washington, D.C., and Moscow was installed so that U.S. and Soviet government heads could contact each other directly in case of an international emergency. During the summer Kennedy visited Western Europe to emphasize the interdependence of the U.S. and Europe and to give notice that the U.S. would not relinquish its commitments there.

THE VIETNAM WAR PERIOD 

While relations with the USSR improved, the situation in Southeast Asia deteriorated. At the Vienna conference in 1961 Kennedy and Khrushchev had agreed on the establishment of a neutralist government in Laos. In South Vietnam, however, increased pressure by the Communist-dominated nationalists known as the Vietcong led Kennedy to expand U.S. military aid for the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. On Nov. 1, 1963, the unpopular regime was deposed with tacit U.S. approval, and the succeeding military junta received immediate U.S. recognition.

President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Tex. He was succeeded by Vice-President Johnson. The suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (1939–63), was arrested almost immediately. Before he could be questioned about the crime, he was himself shot to death by Jack Ruby (1911–67), a Dallas nightclub owner and Kennedy partisan. Because the killing of Oswald and the confusion of reported details on the shooting of the president gave rise to many doubts and rumors of a possible conspiracy, President Johnson appointed a commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the assassination. In a report that has remained controversial, the commission concluded that Oswald was the sole assassin. See WARREN REPORT,.

Legislative Activity. 

Vice-President Johnson, who had been in Texas with President Kennedy, took the presidential oath of office on the plane that subsequently bore Kennedy's body back to Washington, D.C. On November 27 he delivered his first presidential address before Congress, pledging his support for the established lines of foreign policy and urging speedy enactment of the civil rights and tax bills initiated by Kennedy.

The first months of Johnson's administration were marked by virtually unparalleled legislative activity. In late February 1964 Congress passed a bill that substantially reduced individual income and corporate taxes over a two-year period. In August the president secured passage of an extensive antipoverty program to provide youth training projects, aid to farm families, community projects, and other means of ameliorating economic distress. A civil rights law passed on July 2 prohibited discrimination in the use of federal funds and in public accommodations and set up an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prevent discrimination in the job market. The 24th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on Jan. 23, 1964, prohibited imposition of any poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aided voter registration by blacks. See POLL TAX,.

Johnson Elected. 

In 1964 the Democrats nominated Johnson as their candidate for president, with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. The Republicans nominated Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona and Representative William Miller (1914–83) of New York. In the campaign, Johnson amplified his vision of a Great Society for the U.S. Goldwater urged a general reduction in the role of the federal government and advocated a strongly anti-Communist foreign policy. Johnson won the election, and the Democratic majority increased in both the Senate and the House.

In January 1965 Johnson outlined a wide-ranging domestic program. During the year Congress enacted most of his proposals, including aid to education, grants for medical research, housing and urban renewal programs, antipoverty activities, an excise tax cut, federal enforcement of voting rights, and medical care for the aged. In 1966, however, extended debate resulted in the defeat of a major civil rights bill forbidding discrimination in housing and of a bill permitting states to enact right-to-work laws. The Senate also voted, in effect, to annul a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that required desegregation of hospitals.

In 1966 the Supreme Court decided that the use of the poll tax as a state voting prerequisite was unconstitutional and, in Miranda v. Arizona, declared self-incriminating statements to be inadmissible as evidence if the prisoner had not been warned of his or her rights. The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on Feb. 10, 1967, established procedures for succession of the vice-president in cases of presidential disability and for the appointment of a vice-president when that office becomes vacant.

Domestic and Foreign Crises. 

Discontent and impatience among blacks became especially evident in the summer of 1965, when a severe riot occurred in Watts, a predominantly black section of Los Angeles. Disturbances occurred in 1967 in more than 30 cities. The president subsequently appointed a commission, headed by the former governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner (1908–76), to investigate the causes of these civil disturbances. The report of the commission, issued in 1968, warned of the increasing racial polarization in the U.S.

In foreign affairs, the Johnson administration was confronted by a number of crises, beginning in Latin America. A serious dispute arose between the U.S. and Panama over the control of the Panama Canal, and, after anti-American riots in Panama, a new treaty for the operation of the canal was negotiated. In 1965 the threat of civil war in the Dominican Republic led Johnson to dispatch 22,000 U.S. troops to that country to protect the lives of U.S. citizens living there and to prevent the establishment of a Communist dominated government. The intervention aroused anti-American sentiment throughout the hemisphere and provoked much criticism within the U.S. Another crisis in the Middle East, followed by a war between Israel and several Arab nations in June 1967 (see Six-Day War), set off an intensive round of diplomatic maneuvers that culminated in a meeting in June of President Johnson and Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin at Glassboro, N.J. In response to Soviet aid for the Arab nations and growing Soviet influence in the Mediterranean, the U.S. increased its military aid to Israel.

The Vietnam Controversy. 

Johnson's principal problem in foreign affairs was the Vietnam War. During 1964 he continued Kennedy's policy of sending military “advisers” to assist the military forces of South Vietnam, but undertook no further escalation of the conflict. In the presidential election of 1964, Senator Goldwater advocated increased U.S. involvement, including the bombing of North Vietnam, and Johnson opposed further escalation of the war. In the same year, however, Johnson reported an attack by the North Vietnamese on U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, and sent to Congress a resolution authorizing the president to increase U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. was passed by both houses. By 1967 the U.S. was bombing virtually the whole of North Vietnam and had committed nearly 500,000 troops to the war. Johnson's policy of escalation precipitated a great public debate at home, which was intensified in January 1968, during the so-called Tet offensive, when the North Vietnamese interrupted an unofficial truce with a series of offensive strikes. The U.S. commander, Gen. William C. Westmoreland (1914–2005), thereupon called for an additional 206,000 troops. Johnson, responding to critics of the war within his own administration and throughout the U.S., refused the request and subsequently relieved Westmoreland of his command. Another Asian crisis also occurred in January, when the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo was seized by naval forces of North Korea. After lengthy negotiations, the crew was released late in 1968.

Reflecting increasing dissatisfaction with Johnson's conduct of the war—which would continue to exert its divisive influence on every aspect of national life until the end of U.S. involvement in 1973—Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota announced his intention to challenge the president for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. In the primary election in New Hampshire in March 1968, McCarthy received 44 percent of the vote against a candidate representing Johnson. McCarthy's surprisingly strong showing was taken as an indication of the strength of the antiwar movement and was followed by an announcement by Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York that he, too, would become a presidential candidate. On March 31, in a television address, Johnson announced that he was suspending the bombing of North Vietnam as a means of furthering negotiations for the conclusion of the war, and that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968. His administration was thereafter marked by a series of domestic disorders. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4 in Memphis, Tenn., precipitated a new wave of riots in Washington, D.C., and several other cities. Severe disturbances by students at Columbia University and other educational institutions aroused considerable controversy over the use of police to control such disturbances. On June 5 Robert Kennedy was shot after winning the Democratic primary election in California; he died the next day.

Nixon Elected President. 

At the Republican national convention in August, Richard Nixon was nominated for president, with Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland as the vice-presidential candidate. The Democratic convention in Chicago was marked by vehement conflicts, and outbursts of violence, between supporters and critics of Johnson's policies. Vice-President Humphrey received the presidential nomination, and Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine was selected as the vice-presidential candidate. In the election, Nixon, calling for a restoration of social stability, won with some difficulty. A third candidate, the former governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, running largely on regional issues, emerged as the head of the newly formed American Independent party.

When President Nixon took office in 1969, his approach to domestic affairs was similar to that of President Eisenhower. Calling his program the New Federalism, he sought to limit the power of the federal government and to aid state and local authorities in fulfilling their responsibilities. Accordingly, one of Nixon's first legislative proposals was a revenue-sharing program by which federal taxes would be partly redistributed to state and local governments to help them cope with their mounting financial problems. The president also recommended a drastic reorganization of welfare programs and proposed the establishment of a minimum federal standard of welfare assistance. To counteract the inflation that had developed during the 1960s, he called for a reduction in government expenditures but for about two years rejected suggestions for wage and price controls.

Supreme Court Appointments. 

Nixon's interest in law and order was expressed in his appointments to the Supreme Court and in crime legislation. The Court had two vacancies in his first year in office. To replace the retiring Earl Warren, he nominated Warren E. Burger of Minnesota, a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, who took office as chief justice of the U.S. in June 1969. His first two nominations for the seat vacated by Associate Justice Abe Fortas were defeated in the Senate, but Harry A. Blackmun of Minnesota, a judge on the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court, was confirmed on May 12, 1970. The resignations of Hugo Black and John M. Harlan in 1971 gave Nixon the unusual opportunity to select another two justices. Lewis F. Powell, Jr., a Virginia lawyer, and William H. Rehnquist of Arizona, an assistant U.S. attorney general, were approved late in the year. The president considered his four appointees “strict constructionists” who would restrict their rulings to the judicial interpretation of the Constitution without attempting to make the Supreme Court an arbiter of the social trends and economic patterns of the country.

Administrative Actions. 

Government reorganization proceeded at an uneven pace. In 1970 the first postal strike in U.S. history was followed by the organization of the Postal Service to replace the 180-year-old Post Office Department. To meet increasing problems of air and water pollution and of general atmospheric conditions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was established in the Commerce Department in October 1970, and the Environmental Protection Agency was set up in December. The Office of Consumer Affairs was established in February 1971 to coordinate federal programs of consumer protection.

The U.S. program of space exploration was marked by several major accomplishments during the Nixon administration, notably the first landing on the moon, by the crew of Apollo 11, on July 20, 1969, after many years of painstaking preparations.

The Continuing Vietnam War. 

Early in his administration, the president outlined a foreign policy based on a “low profile” and on reductions in the U.S. role abroad. The Vietnam War, however, continued, and so did inflation, which many blamed on the war; wages and prices spiraled, although some economists argued that the price increases exceeded the wage increases. The cost of military equipment for allies abroad, in NATO and in Asia, made money short for domestic programs.

The interaction of domestic and foreign affairs influenced the 1970 congressional elections. Despite vigorous personal campaigning, President Nixon and Vice-President Agnew were unable to upset the Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and the Republicans also lost 11 gubernatorial elections. The 92d Congress set its own priorities. Among its attempts to limit the war-making powers of the president was a campaign against the extension of SELECTIVE SERVICE, (q.v.).

The Kent State killings. 

In the U.S., rising civilian dismay with the Vietnamese conflict led to many-sided protests frequently resulting in direct confrontations between the demonstrators, often college students, and National Guard troops. After the U.S. incursion into Cambodia in search of Communist sanctuaries, students at Kent State University, in Ohio, demonstrated in May 1970, and four of them were killed by National Guard troops. Ultimately, 500 campuses experienced student strikes and were closed for a considerable time. The police throughout the nation faced accusations of brutality; in the few cases in which local authorities instituted investigations, these allegations were seldom proved conclusively. A number of public buildings were bombed, notably the U.S. Capitol in March 1971, and bomb threats and arson were not uncommon occurrences.

Vietnamization. 

President Nixon announced that he intended to “wind down” the war through a policy of “Vietnamization,” or replacement of U.S. troops by South Vietnamese forces trained and equipped by the U.S. to withstand their North Vietnamese and Vietcong enemies. Nixon withdrew more than 350,000 U.S. troops from the war zone; by the end of 1971 fewer than 175,000 remained. The peace talks that had been instituted by President Johnson at Paris were continued, with no result, and the Communists continued in their refusal to discuss the freeing of U.S. captives. Congress, nevertheless, attempted to make the president move faster. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution was withdrawn in November 1970, and Congress tried to limit funds for conduct of the war by various parliamentary means. Nixon ordered the resumption of large-scale bombing of supply trails and antiaircraft defenses in North Vietnam late in 1971.

Other Foreign Affairs. 

In the Middle East, the uneasy peace was frequently broken by Arab guerrilla adventures and Israeli counterthrusts in full force. But Egyptian-Israeli confrontations across the Suez Canal reached only minor proportions because the parties largely observed a cease-fire, beginning in August 1970, arranged at the urging of U.S. negotiators. Soviet missiles were added to Egyptian defenses, but the U.S. did not add substantially to Israeli equipment.

Relations with the USSR improved, in the opinion of some political observers. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), begun in 1969, continued into 1972. In May, during President Nixon's state visit to Moscow, two agreements between the U.S. and the USSR were signed. One agreement limited antiballistic missile systems, and the other put restrictions on offensive missile launchers.

An agreement for unlimited access through East Germany to West Berlin was negotiated by France, Great Britain, the U.S., and the USSR in the summer of 1971. Meanwhile, the U.S. had signed treaties calling for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons in November 1969, and for the banning of nuclear weapons, and the testing of them, on the ocean floor, on Feb. 11, 1971.

President Nixon resumed the personal diplomacy of previous presidents. He traveled to Romania and other countries soon after his inauguration; he visited Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, and other countries in the fall of 1970; and he met the emperor of Japan in Alaska in September 1971; but he left his most ambitious efforts for later. In July 1971 Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon's adviser on national security, went secretly to Beijing to arrange a meeting between the president and the leaders of the People's Republic of China. President Nixon went to Beijing in February 1972, and parts of his visit were transmitted by television throughout the world. According to the president, “there were no secret deals” but the two countries did agree to “expand cultural, educational and journalistic contacts” and “to begin and broaden trade.”

The October 1971 meeting of the UN brought a breach in U.S. relations with Asian allies. Once the Nixon visit to Beijing was announced, the members of the UN no longer felt constrained to keep Communist China from occupying the Security Council seat allotted to China. Despite an attempt to keep the Nationalist Chinese representatives in the UN, the U.S. was defeated; and Taiwan was expelled from all organizations in the UN.

At the end of 1971 a brief war between India and Pakistan over the autonomy of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) damaged U.S. relations with India, as the U.S. “tilted” toward Pakistan.

The Pentagon Papers. 

Domestic and foreign relations were again intertwined in the summer of 1971. In June the administration clashed with several major newspapers on its right to enforce “prior restraint,” or censorship, on their publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, excerpts from a classified secret Defense Department history of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. The newspapers, primarily the New York Times and the Washington Post, claimed the protection of the 1st Amendment and declared it their “public duty” to publish the information on how decisions concerning U.S. involvement in Vietnam were reached. Government-obtained injunctions were appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices voted 6–3 that the government was unable to stop publication of any information, no matter how embarrassing diplomatically, when national security was not involved. Criminal prosecution for violation of the espionage act and for theft of government property was started immediately against Daniel Ellsberg (1931–    ), a former civilian employee in the Defense Department, who was one of the compilers of the history and had admitted supplying the respective documents to the newspapers.

Economic Measures. 

In July 1971, for the first year in the century, it appeared that the U.S. would import more merchandise than it exported, and consequently it faced a severe deficit in its balance of payments. A federal budget deficit of about $20 billion was projected for fiscal 1971. In August a crisis in world monetary stability was evident, and the value of the dollar was threatened for the second time in a year.

On August 15, President Nixon announced a new economic policy to aid the U.S. economic position at home and abroad. Reversing his previous refusal to impose price and wage controls, he announced a 3-month freeze on wages, prices, and rents. He suspended redemption of dollars in gold and imposed a 10 percent surcharge on imported goods. He established a Cost of Living Council to set up guidelines for labor and management and to establish machinery for enforcement.

Abroad, the monetary exchanges were temporarily thrown into confusion, but trading resumed, and reevaluations were achieved by “floating” certain currencies, among them the Japanese yen and the West German mark. Finally, after a meeting of the International Monetary Fund and hard bargaining within the so-called Group of Ten—ten major industrial nations—the U.S., in December 1971, agreed to raise the price of gold slightly and, for the first time since the 1930s, to devalue the dollar by about 8.6 percent. The import surcharge introduced earlier was rescinded at the time. The dollar was devalued by another 10 percent in February 1973.

The end of the 90-day freeze, in November 1971, was followed by the institution of a program of controlled increases in prices, wages, and rents, called Phase II. A Pay Board and a Price Commission were set up to establish guidelines and oversee compliance to reduce inflation. In January 1973 Phase III of the economic program was begun. Price and wage increases were allowed, but the government retained sufficient power to intercede if increases exceeded prescribed guidelines.

Nixon Reelected. 

Meanwhile, on Nov. 7, 1972, President Nixon won reelection in an overwhelming victory over the Democratic party candidate, Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota. The president received 520 electoral votes, McGovern, 17 (namely those of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia). In this presidential election, 18-year-olds were allowed to vote for the first time, in accord with the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which had been ratified on June 30, 1971. As President Nixon's second term began, an event that was received with a sense of relief and thankfulness by the people of the U.S. was the signing, on Jan. 27, 1973, of a cease-fire agreement in Paris, making possible the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. For all practical purposes, the longest and most controversial war in U.S. history was over.

FROM WATERGATE THROUGH THE 2000 ELECTION 

Shortly after Nixon's second inauguration in January 1973, revelations rapidly mounted concerning an illegal wiretap and attempted burglary at the national headquarters of the Democratic party in the WATERGATE, (q.v.) building complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. Five people working for the Republican Committee for the Re-election of the President were arrested on the scene. The subsequent indictments, trials, and investigations implicated high members of the Nixon administration in the planning of the break-in. The name Watergate became synonymous with a series of illegal, unethical, and irregular acts committed by members of the administration. The U.S. was faced with a series of political and economic crises in the next few years. Vice-President Agnew resigned on Oct. 10, 1973, after indictment for bribery and evasion of federal income taxes. Succeeding him, according to the provisions of the 25th Amendment, Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 40th vice-president on Dec. 6, 1973.

On the economic front, the unabated rise in the cost of living caused serious concern throughout the nation. The government's wage and price program was revised in June 1973, essentially to remise the freeze on prices and wages first established in August 1971. Phase IV, announced on Aug. 13, 1973, relaxed price and wage controls in some industries and imposed controls in others. It expired April 30, 1974, leaving only the petroleum industry controlled.

Détente. 

In foreign affairs, the policy of détente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was continued. Leonid Brezhnev and President Nixon exchanged visits in 1973 and 1974. They signed agreements calling for joint cooperation in oceanography, transportation, agriculture, and expanded cultural exchange programs. Détente suffered a setback in October 1973, during a renewed outbreak of Arab-Israeli hostilities, when the Kremlin supported the Arabs and the U.S. supported Israel (see YOM KIPPUR WAR,). The two superpowers cooperated, however, in bringing about agreements on a cease-fire and disengagement of forces between Israel and Egypt in January 1974 and between Israel and Syria in May. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a key role in achieving these settlements.

Nixon's Resignation. 

From the fall of 1973 through the summer of 1974, the evidence steadily mounted that President Nixon himself was implicated in the Watergate burglary and its attempted cover-up, and that it was indeed only one aspect of a series of lawless acts committed by the administration. As a result, by the beginning of August 1974 the president was faced with imminent impeachment. He resigned on August 9, the first president of the U.S. to do so. Vice-President Ford, who succeeded him immediately, was the first to serve without having been elected either to the vice-presidency or the presidency. One of the new president's first official actions was to pardon his predecessor for any crimes that he might have committed while in office. Against the public outcry that the pardon provoked, Ford contended that it was a means of “putting Watergate behind us.” Ford was partly successful in restoring the badly shaken confidence in the presidency, but several months passed before Congress confirmed Nelson A. Rockefeller as the 41st vice-president; he was sworn in on Dec. 19, 1974.

The Ford Administration. 

The worldwide recession was deepening, and the U.S. was experiencing its highest unemployment and inflation rates in decades. An embargo on oil shipments to the U.S. and other industrial nations had been imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in the winter of 1973–74, and oil prices had quadrupled in a few months, intensifying the international monetary crisis. The impetus toward peace in the Middle East had slowed, and an outbreak of hostilities in Cyprus in 1974 threatened the existence of NATO as two of its members, Greece and Turkey, opponents in Cyprus, suspended cooperation with the organization.

Meanwhile, the sudden resurgence of war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the subsequent Communist victory, and the concomitant expulsion of the U.S. from Southeast Asia in the spring of 1975 weakened confidence in U.S. strength and loyalty to its allies.

Ford was unable to win approval for his legislative programs to fight inflation and increase energy resources as he contended with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, the result of the 1974 midterm elections. He continued to support Secretary of State Kissinger's “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East, but in June 1975 he assumed a new diplomatic initiative of his own. Traveling to Europe, he conferred personally with European heads of state, as well as with President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt.

In 1975 the U.S. began to emerge from the recession that had begun in 1973. The country's unemployment rate remained high, however, and many automobile and construction workers were without jobs. Some state and local governments had difficulty balancing their budgets; New York City, for instance, needed federal assistance to remain solvent.

Carter Elected. 

In July 1976 Jimmy Carter, a former governor of Georgia and a newcomer to national politics, gained the Democratic presidential nomination. In the November elections Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, narrowly defeated the Republican candidates, President Ford and Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. The Democrats maintained their strong majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Following his low-key inauguration in January 1977, Carter drew up a wide-ranging legislative program, much of which received severe criticism in Congress. In April the president offered a package of complicated legislation designed to reduce the nation's consumption of petroleum by encouraging the use of power sources such as coal and solar energy. The Senate altered much of the package, which was finally passed in November 1978. Carter had some success in his effort to streamline the federal bureaucracy, however, and in October 1977 a new Department of Energy began operations. The national unemployment rate fell, but the rate of inflation increased. As prices increased, so did taxes. California voters responded by passing Proposition 13, a legislative initiative that sharply reduced property taxes in the state, and people in other parts of the nation also called for lower taxes.

The Carter Administration. 

In foreign affairs, Carter strongly criticized the governments of the Soviet Union and other countries for violating the human rights of their citizens. In September 1977 the president signed treaties giving Panama control of the Panama Canal on Dec. 31, 1999; after heated debate, the treaties were ratified by the Senate in early 1978. The administration attempted to mediate a peace settlement in the Middle East, and in September 1978 Carter hosted a conference at Camp David, near Washington, D.C., with the leaders of Egypt and Israel. The meeting produced a framework for negotiations that resulted in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in March 1979. In January 1979 the U.S. had established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China.

The hostage crisis. 

In November 1979, after Carter had allowed the deposed shah of Iran to enter the U.S. for medical treatment, a group of Iranian revolutionists stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 53 staff members as hostages. When the U.S. refused the captors' demand for the shah's extradition, a stalemate ensued. In April 1980 Carter ordered an airborne rescue attempt that failed. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (1917–    ) opposed the rescue mission and resigned. Meanwhile, in January 1980, the U.S. had restricted trade with the Soviet Union in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and refused to ratify the U.S.-Soviet strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT II).

The economy. 

In 1979 and '80 the economic situation deteriorated. As U.S. imports continued to exceed exports, the dollar declined, and the annual inflation rate rose to more than 10 percent. The automotive industry, for decades a mainstay of the economy, suffered losses due to foreign imports, and Chrysler Corp. needed federal loan guarantees to forestall bankruptcy.

The 1980 Election. 

President Carter, having defeated a challenge from Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, won his party's nomination to run for reelection in 1980. The Republicans nominated a conservative, former screen actor and governor of California Ronald W. Reagan. Republican Congressman John B. Anderson (1922–    ) of Illinois ran as an independent. The Democrats, blamed by many for the declining economy and the Iranian hostage crisis—which was not resolved until January 1981—lost in every section of the country. Reagan and his running mate, George Herbert Walker Bush, won 51 percent of the popular vote to 41 percent for Carter and 7 percent for Anderson. The Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time in nearly 30 years, and Jimmy Carter became the first elected president to lose his bid for reelection since Herbert Hoover in 1932.

The Reagan Administration. 

President Reagan's announced intentions were to lower taxes, to reduce government spending and regulations, and to strengthen the defense establishment. An attempt on his life in March 1981 left him wounded but failed to slow the impetus of his program. In the following months, Congress enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history, cut spending by sharply curtailing aid to the poor and to state and local governments, and increased the defense budget. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board kept interest rates high in an attempt to reduce the money supply and thus curb inflation. This policy slowed economic activity, which lowered government tax revenues. The lower tax yield, combined with the high interest rates the government itself had to pay to borrow money, frustrated Reagan's plan to bring spending under control. The federal deficit mounted. The recession of 1981–82 drove the national unemployment rate above 10 percent for the first time since 1940, and more businesses failed than in any year since 1932. The poor economy helped Democrats to gain seats in the 1982 congressional election.

In foreign relations, President Reagan and his secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (1924–    ), continued to move away from détente with the Soviet Union. In mid-1982, George P. Shultz replaced Haig. American peacekeeping forces in Lebanon suffered heavy casualties in terrorist bombings in 1983, and Reagan withdrew the marines in February 1984.

Reagan ordered a surprise invasion of Grenada in October 1983. The immediate purpose was the rescue of U.S. medical students from political turmoil, but the administration also cited requests for help from Grenada's Caribbean neighbors. In Central America, Reagan backed government forces in El Salvador but supported guerrillas against the Nicaraguan government. Relations with the Soviet Union worsened after Reagan announced the STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE (q.v.), which became known as “Star Wars.”

Economic issues dominated the 1984 presidential campaign. On the Democratic side, former Vice-President Mondale won a bruising primary battle against Sen. Gary Hart (1937–    ) of Colorado, who stressed the need for “new ideas,” and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the first black to win a party presidential primary. Mondale selected as his vice-presidential running mate Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro, the first woman to run for such high office on a major party ticket. Reagan and Bush captured 59 percent of the vote, carrying 49 states and 525 electoral votes.

Just before the elections, the Russians had signaled their desire for a new opening on arms control, and two summits were held (November 1985; October 1986) between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The U.S. space program suffered a severe setback when the space shuttle Challenger exploded after lift-off on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board. In April the U.S. launched a major air strike against Libya in retaliation for terrorist attacks against Americans elsewhere. In June, Chief Justice Burger announced his retirement, and Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist replaced him in September.

Interim elections in November returned control of the Senate to the Democrats. The Reagan administration was further weakened during 1987 by continued budget and trade deficits and by a congressional investigation into the U.S. sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits from the sale to support the Nicaraguan rebels. On Oct. 19, 1987, the stock market suffered its worst one day loss in history, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 508 points, or 22.6 percent. The nation's budget and trade deficits continued to exceed $100 billion annually. In December Reagan and Gorbachev signed a treaty to eliminate certain missiles. During 1988 Congress ratified the treaty, toughened civil rights laws, and authorized reparations for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

The 1988 Election. 

Vice-President Bush defeated several challengers to win the Republican presidential nomination; in the Democratic primary campaign, Governor Michael S. Dukakis (1933–    ) of Massachusetts outlasted civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Bush and his vice-presidential choice, Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, capitalized on the peace-and-prosperity issue. With a popular vote majority of 54 to 46 percent, Bush became the first incumbent vice-president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to be elected president. In the Senate and House, however, the Democrats increased their majorities.

The Bush Administration. 

Facing President Bush when he took office on Jan. 20, 1989, were the federal trade and budget deficits, the insolvent savings and loan system, and the Soviet diplomatic offensive in Europe. One of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history took place on March 24, when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil. In June, Jim Wright (1922–    ) became the first Speaker of the House to resign due to ethical misconduct charges. A measure to bail out the ailing savings institutions was enacted in August. Responding to rapid political changes in Eastern Europe, Bush offered aid to Poland and Hungary during visits there in July. In December more than 24,000 troops invaded Panama to oust the regime of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. During summits in December 1989 and May–June 1990, Bush and Gorbachev agreed to end production and reduce stockpiles of chemical weapons. In mid-1990 the U.S. economy entered a recession. Bush reneged on his pledge of “no new taxes” in accepting a 5-year deficit-reduction package passed by Congress in October. Two new Supreme Court justices, David H. Souter (1990) and Clarence Thomas (1991), solidified the conservative majority.

During 1990–91, the U.S. took the lead in ousting Iraq from Kuwait. More than 500,000 allied troops served in the PERSIAN GULF WARS, (q.v.) of 1991. In April, U.S. troops intervened in northern Iraq to protect Kurdish refugees from Iraqi government reprisals. U.S. diplomatic activity then centered on a joint effort with the USSR toward peace in the Middle East. After the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991–92, the U.S. recognized nearly all their former constituent republics.

One of the worst riots in U.S. history erupted in Los Angeles in April 1992 after the acquittal of four white police officers charged with the videotaped beating 13 months earlier of a black suspect, Rodney King (1965–    ); 58 people died in the rioting, and property damage exceeded $750 million. In a second Rodney King trial (April 17), two of the four police officers were found guilty. In May a 203-year-old measure restricting the power of Congress to raise its own pay became the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. A devastating hurricane struck south Florida in August; 41 people died and property damage was about $20 billion.

The 1992 Election. 

Beating back a challenge from conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan (1938–    ), President Bush won renomination on the Republican ticket, while Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas emerged as the Democratic nominee. In the general election campaign, Bush and Vice-President Quayle attacked Clinton as untrustworthy and inexperienced, while Clinton and his vice-presidential running mate, Al Gore, accused Bush of mishandling the economy and neglecting other domestic problems. Clinton won with a popular-vote plurality of about 43 percent; Bush received 38 percent; and independent candidate H. Ross Perot, running as a fiscal reformer, garnered 19 percent. The Democrats kept their majorities in both the Senate and the House. In December, while still in office, Bush dispatched more than 20,000 U.S. peacekeeping troops to Somalia under UN auspices. President-elect Clinton supported this move as he did Bush's signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) II nuclear disarmament treaty with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in January 1993.

Clinton's First Term. 

In his first three years in office, Clinton won passage of legislation that reduced the annual budget deficit by increasing taxes and slowing the growth of federal spending. Family leave for workers, a national service program, and anticrime and gun-control measures also became law, and the North American Free Trade Agreement and the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were ratified. Congress blocked Clinton's economic stimulus program, however, and failed to agree on a plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system.

In foreign affairs, Clinton continued U.S. support for Yeltsin in Russia, maintained a tough line on Iraq, promoted the Middle East peace process, and normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam. The last U.S. troops left Somalia in March 1994. In September, U.S. negotiators led by former President Jimmy Carter reached an agreement allowing U.S. troops to enter Haiti unopposed, so that its elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1953–    ), could return to power.

Undercutting Clinton's foreign and domestic policy successes was a series of missteps and scandals that dogged the president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and other administration officials. Republicans scored major gains in the 1994 elections, winning control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1954. They used their congressional majorities to push for cuts in taxes and spending; the resulting budget battles between the Clinton administration and Republican leaders led to two partial U.S. government shutdowns late in 1995. Meanwhile, the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, a blast that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, and several violent incidents on and near the White House grounds raised fears about U.S. vulnerability to terrorist attack.

Under a peace agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, during November 1995 and signed in Paris the following month, more than 20,000 U.S. troops were sent to Bosnia as part of a NATO peacekeeping force. In April 1996, while on a mission to Bosnia, a military plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown (1941–96) and other Commerce Department officials and U.S. business executives crashed near Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing all 35 persons on board.

As Congress and the White House prepared for the 1996 elections, the prevailing mood in Washington shifted, if only temporarily, from confrontation to cooperation. A measure signed into law in April established the line-item veto, granting the president limited authority to annul certain types of spending measures and tax benefits. During August and September, Congress raised the minimum wage; reformed the health insurance system to allow workers who change jobs to maintain their coverage; enacted new laws to combat terrorism and illegal immigration; and passed a far-reaching welfare measure that replaced the federal program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a system of block grants to the states.

The 1996 Election. 

To tame the conservative tide that had swept many Democrats out of office in 1994, Clinton shelved some of the ambitious initiatives he had embraced during the first two years of his presidency. Instead, he recast himself as a moderate defender of popular government programs that Republicans seemed eager to cut. As Clinton moved rightward, he encountered surprisingly little opposition from liberals in his own party, and he swept unchallenged through the Democratic primaries. He was renominated with Vice-President Gore in August. On the Republican side a bitter battle developed, from which Bob Dole, a longtime Senate leader, emerged as the GOP nominee. Dole sought to capitalize on voters' doubts about Clinton's honesty and trustworthiness, and he contrasted the president's lack of military service with his own record of service in World War II. The prosperous economy and booming securities markets favored Clinton, however, and Dole and Republican vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp were unable to persuade voters that they could carry out their promise to cut taxes by 15 percent without ballooning the federal budget deficit. Clinton and Gore won 49 percent of the popular vote; Dole and Kemp received 41 percent, and third-party presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and his running mate, economist Pat Choate (1941–    ), took less than 9 percent. During the last few weeks of the campaign, with Clinton leading by a wide margin in most public opinion polls, GOP leaders began urging voters to reelect a Republican-controlled Congress to avoid giving the president a “blank check.” The strategy paid off, as Republicans increased their lead in the Senate and held onto a reduced majority in the House.

Clinton's Second Term. 

Economic conditions remained favorable in 1997. Growth held steady, inflation stayed moderate, and the unemployment rate and the annual budget deficit shrank to levels not seen since the early 1970s. Congress passed in July, and President Clinton signed in August, a package of domestic spending cuts and tax reductions intended to ensure a balanced federal budget in 2002. New cabinet selections, including Madeleine Albright as secretary of state, initially met with a favorable reception in the Senate, but congressional resistance to some of Clinton's executive, ambassadorial, and judicial nominations stiffened as the year wore on. Congressional committees and the U.S. Justice Department launched investigations of both the president and the vice-president, as well as the Democratic National Committee, for political fund-raising irregularities during the 1996 campaign.

Clinton held summit meetings with Yeltsin in March and with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin in October; in June, in Denver, Colo., he hosted the “Summit of the Eight,” an economic conference that for the first time included Russia, in addition to the world's seven leading industrial nations. In April the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires the elimination of chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities by 2007. The U.S. was not among the 89 countries which approved a draft treaty banning the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of antipersonnel land mines at a conference in Oslo in September 1997. The following month, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator, the American peace activist Jody Williams, for their 5-year crusade against the manufacture and use of antipersonnel land mines. Contending that abandonment of land mines would jeopardize the security of U.S. troops in South Korea, the U.S. did not sign the final treaty in December in Ottawa. An agreement reached that month in Kyoto, Japan, to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming (see Environment) faced determined congressional opposition.

In February 1998, with the economy still booming, Clinton became the first president in nearly 30 years to submit a balanced federal budget to Congress. Later that month, a threatened U.S. air attack on Iraq was averted through the last-minute mediation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Between March and June, Clinton made high-profile tours of Africa and China, played a significant behind-the-scenes role in securing a peace settlement in Northern Ireland, and won an important foreign policy victory when the U.S. Senate ratified the expansion of NATO to include Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Major corporate mergers and takeovers were announced in the banking, automotive, and telecommunications industries, and the U.S. Justice Department launched an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, a leading computer firm. In August the U.S. responded to bombings at American embassies in Kenya andTanzania with cruise missile strikes at what were described as terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Impeachment. 

On the political scene, meanwhile, investigations of Whitewater, campaign fund-raising abuses, and other allegations of misconduct by the president and members of his administration kept Clinton on the defensive, although his overall job approval remained high. In September, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr (1946–    ) submitted a report to the House of Representatives alleging that the president may have committed impeachable offenses, and the House initiated a formal inquiry the following month. Later in October, the president regained some of his lost prestige by breaking a stalemate in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Democratic gains in the November elections were a bitter disappointment to Republicans and brought major changes in the GOP leadership, including the resignation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

After canceling another imminent attack on Iraq in mid-November, Clinton authorized a U.S.-British air assault, called Operation Desert Fox, which commenced December 16; the military campaign, which the U.S. justified as a response to Iraq's noncompliance with UN weapons inspections, was the most intense bombardment of Iraqi military targets since the Persian Gulf War. The operation concluded on December 19, the same day the House passed two of four proposed articles of impeachment against Clinton—the first time in 130 years that a U.S. president had been impeached. One article, enacted by a margin of 228 to 206, accused him of lying to a federal grand jury concerning his relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky (1973–    ); a second, approved on a vote of 221 to 212, charged the president with obstruction of justice in covering up the Lewinsky affair. While nearly all House Republicans voted for impeachment, nearly all Democrats opposed it, with many contending that Clinton should be censured instead. In the concluding hours of the impeachment debate, House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (1943–    ), who two days earlier had admitted his own marital infidelities, announced that he would not serve as Speaker and urged the president to follow his example and resign from office.

J. Dennis Hastert (1942–    ), an Illinois Republican with a reputation as a consensus builder, was elected Speaker of the House on Jan. 6, 1999. Clinton's trial in the Senate began the following day, with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist presiding. The outcome was rarely in doubt. National polls showed that most Americans wanted Clinton to remain in office, and with a two-thirds majority required to convict, Senate Democrats had more than enough votes to force an acquittal. On February 12, after a five-week trial that relied almost entirely on the evidence Starr had collected, the Senate rejected both articles of impeachment. Ten Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting down the perjury charge. The Senate then split 50-50 on the article alleging obstruction of justice, as five Republicans—all moderates from northeastern states where Clinton was especially popular—broke ranks to join their Democratic colleagues.

Conflict over Kosovo. 

Only a few weeks after the impeachment trial ended, Clinton confronted the most serious foreign policy crisis of his presidency. A long-simmering dispute with Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloševic erupted into open warfare in March 1999, when NATO, led by the U.S., launched a sustained air assault to keep the Serb leader from carrying out a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Albanians in Kosovo. The air strikes caused extensive damage within Serbia but failed to halt Serbian military operations against the Kosovars, hundreds of thousands of whom flooded across the border, mainly into Albania and Macedonia. The conflict cast a pall over the NATO summit conference held in Washington, D.C., in April to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the alliance. Relations with China, already strained by allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage at U.S. facilities, reached a crisis on May 7, when NATO bombs mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, killing 3 Chinese journalists and injuring more than 20 diplomats and staff members. The incident, for which the U.S. repeatedly apologized, sparked violent anti-American protests in Beijing and other Chinese cities. The air war against Yugoslavia ended in June when Miloševic agreed to withdraw Serbian troops from Kosovo and a 50,000-member international security force, consisting mainly of NATO troops and including 7000 Americans, entered the region.

The 2000 Election. 

With Clinton constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, the nation faced wide-open choices in both major parties for the first time since 1988. In the Democratic primaries, Vice-President Al Gore beat back a challenge from former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey; on the Republican side, Texas Governor George W. Bush, son of former President Bush, defeated a crowded field of competitors, most notably Senator John McCain of Arizona. During the summer, Gore selected as his running mate Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Jewish American to win a major-party nomination for one of the nation's two highest elective offices; Bush's vice-presidential pick was Richard B. Cheney, who had served in the Bush administration as secretary of defense. The Texas governor campaigned as a “compassionate conservative” who would cut taxes, reform education, and end congressional gridlock, while Vice-President Gore pledged to devote the burgeoning budget surplus to reducing the national debt, shoring up the social security system, and helping the elderly pay for prescription drugs.

The results in November were breathtakingly close. Each of the major-party nominees won about 48 percent of the popular vote, with Gore holding a lead of less than 400,000 out of more than 100 million votes cast; running on the Green party ticket, consumer advocate Ralph Nader finished a distant third with about 3 percent of the total. The final electoral-college tally, which gave Bush a bare majority, hinged on the outcome in Florida, where the Republican nominee's brother, Jeb Bush (1953–    ) was governor; a series of partial recounts, sought by Democrats and authorized by the Florida supreme court, whittled away Bush's lead until, more than a month after Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court put an end to Gore's challenge. Congressional races were nearly as tight, with a 50-50 split in the Senate and a small Republican majority in the House.

AMERICA IN THE 21ST CENTURY 

As the new century began, the nation was focused mainly on domestic issues. Sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001, Bush made a big tax cut his top priority. A $1.35-trillion tax reduction measure, which included immediate tax rebates to stimulate the sputtering economy, received final congressional approval in May and was signed by Bush the following month. Other items on the president's agenda received a less sympathetic hearing, especially in the Senate, where, because of the 50–50 split following the November elections, Democrats had succeeded in gaining parity in committee assignments, even though the Republicans had retained nominal control. Then, in June Vermont Senator James M. (Jim) Jeffords (1934–    ) left the GOP to become an independent, and Democrats took control of the Senate. In August, in his first prime-time television address since his inauguration, Bush announced that he would authorize federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells, under strictly limited conditions. 

The new administration continued basic elements of existing foreign policies. However, departing from an international consensus, the administration opposed the Kyoto accord on global warming, rejecting an agreement to enforce a worldwide ban on biological weapons, and signaled its intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see Arms Control, International).

Terrorist Attacks. 

The nation's political, economic, and military outlook was drastically altered on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four large U.S. commercial airliners and carried out the bloodiest assault ever mounted against U.S. civilians on American soil. Within the span of 15 minutes, two separate aircraft flew at full throttle into the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; less than 40 minutes after the second tower was hit, another hijacked jetliner crashed into Department of Defense headquarters at the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C. While heading toward Washington, the fourth aircraft went down in Pennsylvania, apparently after a cockpit struggle between the passengers and hijackers. Before the morning ended, each of the twin towers had collapsed, the World Trade Center was in ruins, part of the Pentagon was in flames, and some 3000 people had lost their lives. (Because of the extent of the World Trade Center wreckage, the exact death toll may never be known.)

The U.S. response. 

Calling the attack an “act of war,” the U.S. government singled out as the prime suspect the al-Qaeda terrorist network, led by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi businessman based in Afghanistan. While police in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere began rounding up known associates of the hijackers, along with other suspected Islamic extremists, the U.S. sought to forge an international coalition against Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which refused to hand over bin Laden. 

U.S. commercial air service was halted for two days while federal authorities tightened airport security, and trading on leading U.S. stock exchanges was suspended until the following week. Congress, showing rare bipartisanship, quickly voted $40 billion in emergency spending to fund military operations and reconstruction efforts, followed by a $15-billion bailout package to aid the airline industry. Patriotic, charitable, and religious appeals also raised more than $1 billion for relief programs. On October 8, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was sworn in to head the Office of Homeland Security, newly established by the White House to coordinate antiterrorism efforts of existing federal agencies. The Bush administration and Congress then moved to address the longer-term economic consequences of the attack, which had plunged the U.S. into recession.

In late October, Bush signed counterterrorism legislation giving federal officials broad new powers to crack down on money laundering, institute wiretaps, conduct surveillance of computers and electronic mail, and arrest and detain noncitizens who are suspected of posing a threat to national security. In response to concerns voiced by civil libertarians, the measure provided for the termination of some of the government's expanded powers after four years unless specifically reauthorized by Congress. By the end of the month, under the direction of Attorney General John Ashcroft, U.S. authorities investigating the September 11 attacks were holding more than 1000 people, many of whom had been detained through closed proceedings; a large number remained in custody under emergency regulations that allowed immigration authorities to hold noncitizens for a “reasonable period of time” without specific charges. (A year later most detainees had been either deported or released.)

War in Afghanistan. 

Although U.S. officials cautioned that the nation's war on international terrorism would involve legal, financial, political, and diplomatic pressures as well as military force, attention quickly focused on the Afghan battlefront. On October 7 the U.S., with British assistance, launched a direct aerial assault on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets within Afghanistan. Sustained bombardment over the next several weeks struck hard at Taliban defenses, offering support for the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces and paving the way for the insertion of a limited number of U.S. ground troops. At the same time, the U.S. sought to provide some Afghans with food and other supplies, both through aerial drops over Afghanistan and by assisting UN refugee relief operations, mostly along the borders with Pakistan and Iran. By mid-November the Taliban had fled Kabul, the Afghan capital; by late December the leading anti-Taliban groups had established an interim power-sharing government and the UN had authorized a multinational security force under British command. Meanwhile, U.S. and allied forces continued to hunt for bin Laden and other suspected terrorists, and planeloads of captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were flown from Afghanistan to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for further detention and interrogation.

Threat of bioterrorism. 

Even as the U.S. stepped up security at border crossings, federal buildings, airports, bridges, tunnels, nuclear and chemical installations, water supplies, and other facilities, American law enforcement and public health authorities were faced with a different kind of terrorist attack. Beginning in late September, a small number of letters contaminated with anthrax bacteria began arriving at the offices of U.S. media organizations and public figures, including Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. (Tom) Daschle (1947–    ), who was not infected. By mid-November, 18 cases of anthrax had been confirmed, and the disease had claimed the lives of five people. Many of the victims were postal workers, who apparently became infected at mail-sorting facilities where contaminated envelopes were processed. Discovery of anthrax spores in other post offices and corporate and government mailrooms compounded the disruption of mail service, especially around Washington, D.C.

Politics, the Economy, and Homeland Security. 

Partisan politics took a back seat to the war on terrorism from September 11 through the end of 2001. In December the House and Senate handed President Bush a major legislative victory when they passed, by lopsided margins, an education reform bill that increased federal aid for public schools and mandated annual testing of grade-school pupils; signing the measure in early January 2002, Bush hailed the new law as a welcome example of cooperation between the White House and Congress and between Republicans and Democrats.

With the nation still at war and public opinion polls showing the president's job approval ratings at 80 percent or higher, Democrats avoided criticizing his handling of national security and foreign policy issues. Democrats did, however, challenge the Republicans' stewardship of the economy, and they sought to tie the Bush administration to a growing scandal involving the collapse of Enron, the nation's largest marketer of electricity and natural gas. The firm, which had revenues of more than $100 billion in 2000, filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, after the value of its stock plummeted from more than $80 to less than $1 per share. A leading proponent of energy deregulation, Enron contributed nearly $1.8 million to Republicans and some $680,000 to Democrats during the 1999–2000 election cycle; company officials had also backed Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. The collapse of Enron was followed by other large bankruptcies, including that of the huge WorldCom telecommunications firm. Allegations of fraud by top financial managers and of lax oversight by auditors, corporate boards, and federal regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, emboldened reformers in Congress; during the first seven months of 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed measures designed to toughen accounting standards and tighten restrictions on political campaign contributions.

As midterm elections approached, Democrats hoped to capitalize on domestic issues to win back the House and consolidate their slim hold on the Senate. Instead, the Bush administration succeeded in focusing the nation's attention on national security issues. The administration itself proposed a major reorganization of the federal government to create a new Department of Homeland Security, and focused attention on Iraq, threatening military action to stop the regime of Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction. In October the House and Senate passed a resolution authorizing the president to take military action against Iraq, if necessary. In the Senate, meanwhile, debate over the proposed Homeland Security Department—which President Bush portrayed as essential for the war against terrorism—got bogged down in a partisan dispute over federal employees' collective bargaining rights. 

Bush, who risked his prestige by campaigning for Republican congressional candidates in tight races, emerged as the big winner in the November 5 election, as Republicans increased their majority in the House, and reclaimed the Senate, and did well in many state and local races. Three days later, the Bush administration received unanimous backing from the UN Security Council for a resumption of weapons inspections within Iraq, under stringent new guidelines that threatened the Iraqi government with “serious consequences” if it failed to comply. When Congress reconvened for a brief session later that month, the logjam on homeland security was broken, and legislation creating the 15th cabinet department was swiftly passed. Bush nominated Ridge to head the new department, which encompassed 22 separate agencies, had some 170,000 employees, and represented the most thoroughgoing reorganization of the executive branch since the establishment of the Department of Defense in the late 1940s. Bush revamped his economic team in December, as the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 6 percent, and the stock market failed to show signs of sustained recovery. That same month, Trent Lott (1941–    ) lost his Senate leadership post after his remarks in praise of Strom Thurmond, who was retiring as senator from South Carolina, were interpreted as an implicit endorsement of Thurmond's segregationist past; when the new Senate convened in January 2003, Bill Frist (1952–    ) of Tennessee became majority leader.

War in Iraq and Other 2003 Developments. 

As the Bush administration entered its third year, the rapid buildup of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf continued to put pressure on Saddam Hussein, even as the U.S. pushed to overcome the reluctance of some European allies and many members of the UN Security Council to endorse direct military action against Iraq. On March 17, Bush demanded that Hussein and his sons leave Iraq within 48 hours; when that country rejected the ultimatum, the U.S. and Great Britain, aided by a small number of other nations, launched an air and ground assault aimed at eradicating the Hussein regime. Oil fields and other key objectives were quickly seized, Iraqi forces were overcome, and by April 9 the Hussein regime had collapsed and U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad. In subsequent weeks, many Iraqi leaders were captured or killed, and allied forces began restoring basic services, including food distribution, water, electricity, and medical care. Under the authority of U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer III (1941–    ), an interim Iraqi Governing Council was established in July, and an Iraqi cabinet in September.

Other aspects of the U.S. occupation did not go nearly so well, however. Although U.S. investigators uncovered extensive evidence revealing the brutality and corruption of the Hussein regime, they were unable to come up with clear proof that Iraq possessed and was preparing to use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons—the principal reason the U.S. had given for going to war. Meanwhile, remnants of the Hussein regime, aided by Islamic extremists, launched a program of sabotage and guerrilla resistance targeted at U.S. and allied troops, Iraqis cooperating with the occupation, and international aid workers. The U.S. military death toll, only 138 during March and April, rose to 358 by the end of October; in November, as the guerrilla insurgency intensified, more Americans were killed in Iraq than in any single month since the war began. At the same time, the financial costs of the war were also mounting. Approval by the U.S. Congress in November of an $87.5 billion package covering military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan raised the overall cost of the Iraq war to more than $110 billion.

With its attention focused on Baghdad for most of the year, the Bush administration sought to play down other foreign policy crises, including a decision by North Korea to abandon a 1994 agreement with the U.S. and accelerate its nuclear weapons development program. Largely out of public view, some 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan continued to fight a shadowy enemy, seeking to thwart a resurgence of Taliban and al-Qaeda influence. The increased American military presence in the Middle East emboldened the U.S. in pressuring Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria, to clamp down on terrorism; the Bush administration was less successful, however, in seeking to persuade Israeli and Palestinian leaders to implement a U.S.-backed “road map” for Middle East peace. 

On the domestic front, the U.S. space program suffered a blow when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated while reentering the earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003; all seven astronauts on board the spacecraft were killed. In June the Supreme Court issued two landmark opinions, one upholding the broad goal of affirmative action in university admissions, the other overturning a state law that had criminalized homosexual behavior. The consecration of an openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire and a ruling by a Massachusetts court favoring civil marriage rights for same-sex couples continued to focus national attention on gay rights issues for much of the year. In August a massive blackout in the northeastern and midwestern U.S. and eastern Canada left more than 50 million people without power for up to a day or more. Political turmoil in the nation's most populous state reached a climax in October, when Californians voted to remove Governor Gray Davis (1942–    ), a Democrat, and replace him with film star Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who campaigned as a moderate on social issues but a conservative in fiscal affairs. Federal deficits continued to rise, but both the stock market and the gross domestic product showed vigorous growth. Bush won legislative victories in October, when Congress approved a ban on partial-birth abortion, and in November, when the House and Senate enacted a measure expanding the Medicare system to include prescription drug benefits for many elderly Americans.

See also AFRICAN-AMERICANS,; CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES,; NORTH AMERICA,; WOMEN'S RIGHTS,.

For further information on this topic, see the Bibliography, sections 1139. U.S. history in general, 1140. The Colonial Period, 1141. The Nineteenth Century, 1142. The Twentieth Century, 1160. Post-World War II, 1161. The Nixon Administration, 1162. Into the 1990s.


An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2005 World Almanac Education Group. A WRC Media Company. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws are prohibited.

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