Key Events in US History: Constitution to WWII
A New Nation
- Through the framing of the U.S. Constitution and the creation of the United States, the government was divided into three branches: legislative (Congress), executive (the president and the federal agencies), and judicial (the federal courts).
- Including 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights to safeguard individual liberties.
- George Washington, the first U.S. president, headed a party favoring a strong president and central government.
- Thomas Jefferson became the third president in 1801. Although he had intended to limit the president’s power, political realities dictated otherwise. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
The Late 19th Century
- Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, depriving America of a leader uniquely qualified by background and temperament to heal the wounds left by the Civil War.
- His successor, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner who had remained loyal to the Union during the war.
- The principle of separation of powers: A president should not be removed from office because Congress disagrees with his policies, but only if he has committed, in the words of the Constitution, “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
- Within a few years after the ending of the Civil War, the United States became a leading industrial power, and shrewd businessmen made great fortunes.
- An electrical industry flourished as Americans made use of a series of inventions: the telephone, the light bulb, the photograph, the alternating-current motor and transformer, motion pictures, etc.
- For American farmers, times were hard. Food prices were falling, and farmers had to bear the costs of high shipping rates, expensive mortgages, high taxes, and tariffs on consumer goods.
The Great Depression
- By 1932, thousands of American banks and over 100,000 businesses had failed.
- That year, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president on the platform of “a New Deal for the American people.”
- Roosevelt’s New Deal programs did not end the Depression. Although the economy improved, full recovery had to await the defense buildup preceding America’s entry into World War II.
World War II
- Again, neutrality was the initial American response to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii by the Japanese in December 1941 brought the United States into the war, first against Japan and then against its allies, Germany and Italy.
- Paris was liberated on August 24, and by September, American units had crossed the German border. The Germans finally surrendered on May 5, 1945.
- The war against Japan came to a swift end in August of 1945, when President Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nearly 200,000 civilians were killed.
The Lost Generation
The “Lost Generation” is a term which refers to the generation of young people who came of age during and shortly after World War I.
The members of the Lost Generation were born at the turn of the 20th century, when the world was changing at a rapid pace. The automobile was making its mark on society, becoming a popular mode of transportation.
In literature, the term The Lost Generation refers to a collective group of writers who settled in Europe in the wake of the First World War. The writings of these authors were shaped by World War I and self-imposed exile from the American mainstream. They worked there from the end of World War I until the Great Depression.