Progressivism in National Politics

Grade 8 Monthly Curriculum Guide November at a Glance (Added)

Progressivism in National Politics
Progressives had pursued reform at the city and state levels, but the real power of reform lay at the national level. The expansion of Progressivism into the federal arena came after the initial reforms at the state level in the late 1800s and continued under the presidential administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.
During his eight years in the White House (1901–1909), President Theodore Roosevelt strongly advocated (from what he called his “bully pulpit” in the White House) Progressive reform and intervened more decisively in national affairs than any president since Abraham Lincoln. His larger-than-life personality had made him a celebrity. He built on this image during his presidency and developed what he called a “square deal” (a term he borrowed from his poker habit) because he offered an even-handed approach to the relationship between labor and business.
“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt – Mini Biography, 3:57
Watch a short biography video of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th president of the United States who focused on ecological preservation. Learn more about Theodore Roosevelt: http://bit.ly/16yHJh6 Watch more videos about Theodore Roosevelt: http://bit.ly/187tKNV Watch the U.S. Presidents play list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Igx... Learn more about U.S. Presidents: http://bit.ly/R8jNbs Learn more about Nobel Peace Prize Winners: http://bit.ly/UUgurs Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was governor of New York before becoming U.S. vice president. At age 42, Teddy Roosevelt became the youngest man to assume the U.S. presidency after President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
https://youtu.be/rzm2EBYfyDg

Theodore Roosevelt – Shall We Prepare? 3:26
Summary Two sequences of TR: Sequence 1: views of TR walking onto the porch of Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, N.Y., facing the camera, and then speaking on military preparedness during WWI; Sequence 2: views of TR sitting at his desk in the Metropolitan Magazine office in New York City and speaking with a man who may be Carl Hovey, editor of the magazine. Other Titles Roosevelt Memorial Association title: TR speaking at Sagamore Roosevelt Memorial Association title: TR in Metropolitan Magazine office, 1916 Theodore Roosevelt speaking at Sagamore Theodore Roosevelt in Metropolitan Magazine office, 1916 Created/Published United States : Paramount Pictures, 1916. Notes Editors, Frederick Palmer, Henry Reuterdahl. Appearing: President Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Hovey. Subjects Roosevelt, Theodore,--1858-1919,--Military leadership. Speeches, addresses, etc., American. Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (Oyster Bay, N.Y.) Silent films. Short films. Nonfiction films. Documentary films. Newsreels. Related Names Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919. Hovey, Carl, b. 1875. Paramount Pictures. Bray Studios. Theodore Roosevelt Association Collection (Library of Congress) Related Titles Metropolitan (New York, N.Y. : 1911)
https://youtu.be/QUKpb3bStX8

Should presidents be “hawks?”
In foreign affairs, Theodore Roosevelt represents a progressive hawk, and initiates a liberal tradition in American politics that continued until recent days.
The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal individual (in the American sense of the term) who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy. Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson have been described as liberal hawks for their roles in bringing about America’s status as the world’s premier military power.

Becoming a World Power
“Between 1867 and 1917, the United States became a true world power for the first time in its history.”
How did America become a world power and should there be an American empire?
Should Americans be involved in foreign wars? 
Between 1867 and 1917, the United States became a true world power for the first time in its history. To a large degree, this was a result of the Industrial Revolution. The search for overseas markets and the ideology of manifest destiny (which held that God had preordained that Americans would possess all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and which Americans had developed in conquering the West in the 1840s and 1850s) spurred the United States to keep pushing outward, building up its navy in the 1880s and beginning to acquire overseas territories. Many Americans also felt they had a duty to “civilize” the so-called “lesser” nations of the world, their superiority based in no small part on notions of racial superiority. Victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898 was a turning point, adding a string of island colonies in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to U.S. territory, and declaring to the world that the United States was a global power.
3:16 America Becomes a World Power – Preview Clip
A short segment from our video program, ‘America Becomes a World Power’. For more information visit our website.
https://youtu.be/IUY_sbI1bZc

Why an American Empire?
While notions of racial superiority justified America’s expansionist positions, America’s creation of an overseas empire during the half-century following the Civil War was driven by four basic reasons: (1) the closing of the American frontier, (2) economics, (3) religious and moral reasons, and (4) geopolitics.
Manifest Destiny and the End of the Frontier
Global imperialism was simply an extension of the way America had “won the West.” Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued in an influential 1893 essay that America’s frontier experience had played a key role in shaping America’s national character, including its democratic political institutions and its free-spirited capitalism. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Turner even suggested (with some trepidation) that the frontier was so integral to the nation’s psyche that Americans might require a new frontier in order to ensure the survival of its democracy. “American energy,” the Turner Thesis concluded prophetically, “will demand a wider field for its exercise.” To Turner, the development of the idea of manifest destiny meant that many Americans felt it natural to continue to explore and conquer, even if that meant crossing seas and continents.
Frederick Jackson Turner
Financial Reasons
Another—and in many cases more decisive—reason for the surge in American overseas imperialism was that American business leaders wanted access to overseas markets and materials. Like those who had first explored the American West, these business leaders usually received the assistance and protection of the federal government. They articulated a “glut thesis,” which argued that the financial panics of the 1870s and the 1890s were the result of the overproduction of goods, as the industrialized economy endured painful fits and starts. One obvious resolution to overproduction is the creation of new markets, and this led business leaders and politicians to advocate American imperial adventures abroad. To a great extent, business interests drove American foreign policy very early on.
Religious and Moral Reasons
Many Christian leaders believed that Christianity had made Western society the evolutionary pinnacle of civilization. American missionaries sought converts, believing they were bringing both progress and salvation to the “uncivilized” peoples of the world. The mood of Protestant imperialism was captured in Reverend Josiah Strong’s Our Country (1885), which argued that white Christian Americans stood at the top of civilization and therefore had a moral duty to bring less privileged peoples the benefits of progress and the fruit of the Christian Gospel. (For more on “the hierarchy of races,” see Chapter 18.)
Geopolitical Reasons
Finally, beginning in the 1870s, several European powers raced to conquer vulnerable but resource-rich regions of Africa and Asia. Such conquests brought these countries substantial profits and a worldwide network of commercial and military bases. Many Americans feared that the United States, by remaining isolated from the land grabbing, would lose access to world markets and geopolitical power.
Beginnings
Dollars propelled the initial drive overseas, first throughout the Pacific, then to Latin America.
Pacific Acquisitions
American businessmen and diplomats had long been attempting to gain access to markets in the Pacific, seeking, first, access to China and Japan, then permanent settlements in various islands in the Pacific. Their goal was to sell American goods to the nations of Asia.
Samoa
Alaska
Latin America
Another region of American economic interest was resource-rich Latin America. European powers had centuries-old colonial presences there, and under the growing expansionist mood, the United States set about undercutting European control and opening up American business opportunities in Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
The Naval Buildup
Spurred by these kinds of acquisitions in the name of American business interests, in 1883 Congress authorized the construction of powerful all-steel, steam-driven battleships, armed with the latest long-range artillery. The North’s decisive use of naval power during the Civil War influenced this buildup. Using ironclad warships, the Union had successfully blockaded several key Confederate ports, all but crippling the South in the process. With its eyes now further afield, the American military began a broad naval buildup.
The Spanish-American War
Using this naval might, the next major international dispute—the Spanish-American War of 1898—transformed the United States into a major overseas power. Ironically, the war was not motivated by imperial appetites. Instead, it was fought for a range of humanitarian, geopolitical, and commercial reasons that, once the war was won, prompted the United States to take a larger global role at the turn of the century.
The Spanish-American War was ignited by Spain’s harsh treatment of the Cuban independence movement. Cuba was one of Spain’s last colonial possessions in the Western Hemisphere, but the Cuban people, resentful of Spain’s heavy-handed rule, had struggled for decades to win their independence. In 1895, their resentment burst into violence when Cuban resistance leader José Martí sparked an interracial rebellion that the Spanish government attempted to put down with brutal force. Martí was eventually killed in battle, making him a martyr to the Cuban people. As the war for Cuban independence continued, the political instability devastated Cuba’s economy, which was a blow to Americans who had invested in Cuba’s sugar plantations. Having an unstable nation so close to U.S. borders concerned American politicians, especially when American business interests might be compromised.
Recognizing a good story when they saw one, newspaper editors (notably Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst) published graphic descriptions of the atrocities committed by the Spanish. These sensationalistic stories fomented anti-Spanish feeling among the American public, who may or may not have known of the substantial American investment in Cuba’s sugar and who probably were unaware of the interracial nature of Cuba’s fighting forces. During these years, this kind of journalism garnered the name yellow journalism, defined as journalism that shows little dependence on fact or research and instead uses sensationalized headlines and storylines to sell more newspapers or magazines.
War on Two Fronts
The Philippines
Like Cuba, the Philippines had long been a Spanish colonial possession, and Spain’s fleet was stationed in Manila Bay. For months the U.S. fleet in the Pacific had been secretly preparing to invade the Philippines in the event of war, and, when war was finally declared, a squadron of American ships left its port in Hong Kong. In Manila Bay on May 1, the American squadron took advantage of its superior equipment to destroy or damage all Spanish ships, killing nearly four hundred Spanish sailors while suffering no American fatalities. Commodore George Dewey became a hero in America for his leadership.
Cuba
Meanwhile, back in Cuba, the United States mounted a rapid campaign to shatter the Spanish army and besiege the port city of Santiago, where Spain’s Caribbean fleet was anchored. In June 1898, 17,000 U.S. troops invaded Cuba and quickly surrounded the city. The most colorful contingent of the American forces was the Rough Riders, led by the future president Theodore Roosevelt. An early and energetic supporter of the war, Roosevelt had long argued that American society needed to be more rugged and manly. It was in this spirit that he resigned his desk-bound naval post in order to lead a regiment of cavalry volunteers. Roosevelt and Leonard Wood, a veteran of the Indian Wars, gathered a mixture of Wall Street businessmen, Ivy League volunteers, western cowboys, and a few Native Americans to fight in Cuba.
Rough Riders
Why Become an Empire? Anti-Imperialism at Home
After the war—and even before—many Americans began to wonder whether the United States should become an imperial power. From the outset of the Spanish-American War, McKinley had assured the American public that the aim of the war was not to create an American empire but to protect the sovereignty of the Cuban people. That was the point of the Teller Amendment. Now that the war was over and Cuba and the Philippines were clearly not independent, McKinley and other political leaders (including Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hay) pushed for annexation of the Philippines by declaring that the Filipinos (as well as inhabitants of Puerto Rico and Guam) were too weak to govern themselves.
Anti-Americanism Abroad
If most Americans were supportive of a growing American empire, Filipinos and Cubans were not. Both countries wanted independence, not American over-lordship. Americans also frequently relied on violence and threats to preserve control in those countries. These two factors created deep veins of anti-American sentiment. Small nations were fearful that America would never allow them to be independent.
Filipino Resistance
Enraged at the prospect of a permanent American presence, Filipino leader Aguinaldo launched the same type of guerrilla war against the Americans that he had waged against the Spanish. In response, a large American force hastened to the islands and, between 1899 and 1902, fought a vicious antiinsurgency war. Both sides tortured and killed their prisoners, treating them as murderers rather than soldiers. American soldiers wrote home questioning the morality of their overseas experiences, citing atrocities like “the water cure,” in which American soldiers would hold down a suspect, place a stick between his teeth, and force him to drink tremendous amounts of salt water. If the suspect did not divulge information, an American soldier would stomp on his stomach and begin the “cure” again. In 1901, American forces captured Aguinaldo, and future president William Howard Taft, sent by McKinley to create a government for the Philippines, persuaded Aguinaldo to call for peace.
https://youtu.be/g2Um0TJLEp4
Progressive-Era Imperialism
After 1900 the United States entered a period of heightened imperialistic activity somewhat similar to that of the 1840s, although this time oceans ceased to serve as boundaries of expansionist activity. Under the energetic Progressive-era presidencies of Roosevelt and Wilson, the United States took a bolder, more aggressive role in international affairs. Toward this end, Roosevelt, whose foreign policy credo was “speak softly and carry a big stick,” supported Secretary of War Elihu Root’s policy of increasing the U.S. armed forces. By 1906, only the navies of Britain and Germany were larger than that of the United States.
Trade with China
After winning the Spanish-American War, the United States sought to demonstrate its status as a major international power. American policymakers first turned to China to open trade. In 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay called for an “Open Door” policy in China, which would allow all nations to trade with China on equal terms. This policy also aimed to prevent foreign powers from partitioning China as they had Africa.
The Panama Canal
The United States next focused on Panama. Ever since the 1840s, American commercial and military planners had eyed Panama’s narrow isthmus as a potential site for a canal. Such interest increased after 1898, when America’s new empire required easier transit between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Panama, however, belonged to Colombia, whose rights to the isthmus the United States had explicitly guaranteed in an 1848 treaty.
Panamanian Revolt
In 1901, negotiations with Colombia broke down over the price of renting the right of way for a canal. Undeterred, Roosevelt, the American president, encouraged an independence movement among the Panamanian people. This would free them from Colombia and, presumably, lead them to grant the United States unobstructed access to build its canal. The Panamanians revolted successfully, thanks in part to an American naval blockade that prevented Colombian soldiers from getting to the scene of the rebellion. As a thank-you to the United States for its timely intervention, in 1903 the new Republic of Panama leased to it a 10-mile-wide Canal Zone. American companies immediately started construction.
Policing Latin America
Concurrent with the building of the Panama Canal, the United States assumed an interventionist role throughout Latin America. Much of this new activity was prompted by continued rivalry with other imperial powers. In 1902, for example, when the Venezuelan government was unable to pay its foreign creditors, British, German, and Italian naval forces threatened to bombard Venezuelan cities unless payments were resumed. Roosevelt regarded this action as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine; by a combination of threats and promises, he persuaded the European navies to withdraw.
America as a World Power
By the early twentieth century, the United States was committed to being a major player in Latin America and Asia. The belief that America’s interests ended at its oceans had been shattered. Americans could no longer think of themselves as isolated from international affairs. Nor could they smugly see their nation as completely different from the European empires whose navies and armies had conquered much of the globe. But did American interests end at the nation’s borders, at the Western Hemisphere, or never? What would America’s role in the world be now that its commercial interests were worldwide? Should American business interests have a role in the nation’s foreign policy? How salient was the notion that the United States should share the “white man’s burden” to spread democracy and white civilization to the world? Americans fell into three camps when it came to viewing themselves as a world power: (1) isolationists, (2) realists, and (3) idealists.