High School U.S. History

1. An Interactive Presentation by:
Chris Merrell

2. The development of the Industrial United

States (1870 – 1900)
Emergence of Modern America (1890 – 1930)

The Great Depression & WWII (1929 – 1945)

Post War United States (1945 – 1970)

Contemporary United States (1968 – Present)


3. •Once the enormous task of recovering from the Civil War was
overcome, The United States embarked on an era of growth.
•Big Business began to take off and become a huge part of
the country
•Mechanization brought farming into the realm of big
business as well, making the United States the world's
premier food producer--a position it has never surrendered.
•In the period from 1870 to 1900, the United States became an
industrialized nation

4. Thomas Edison and the Electric Lamp

Alexander Graham Bell and the Telephone

Joseph Glidden and his patent for Barbed Wire


5. •The demand for labor grew,
and in the late 19th and early
20th centuries many children
were drawn into the labor
force.
•The number of children under
the age of 15 who worked in
industrial jobs for wages
climbed from 1.5 million in quot;There is work that profits children, and there
1890 to 2 million in the early is work that brings profit only to employers.
1900s. The object of employing children is not to
train them, but to get high profits from their
work.quot;
-- Lewis Hine, 1908

6. Two big issues during this period

◦ The dilemma of how to maintain the material benefits
that flowed from the industrial revolution while bringing
the powerful forces creating those benefits under
democratic control and managing economic opportunity.
◦ The other was the issue of how to maintain democracy
and national identity in the context of increasing
immigration and a political environment in which there
was widespread corruption and concentration of power.

7. Foreign policy remained an important issue

during this period
The United States stepped onto the

international stage in the Spanish-American
War at the end of the 19th century.
When the U.S. joined the Allied side in World

War I in 1917, the United States emerged as a
world power.

8. Women continued their struggle for equality.

Eventually gained their right to vote in 1920
Recurring racial tension led on the one hand

to black nationalism, the Harlem Renaissance,
and the first great northward migration of
African Americans and on the other to the
resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

9. The movement to

Americanize a generation
of immigrants gained
strength, leading to the
momentous closing of the
nation's gates through
severe retrenchment of the
open-door immigration
policies.
Tensions increased among

country's various religious
groups.

10. October 29, 1929 the stock market crashes

Two months after the original crash in October,

stockholders had lost more than $40 billion
dollars.
Even though the stock market began to regain

some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just
was not enough and America truly entered what
is called the Great Depression.

11. Unemployment during the great depression was at
one of the highest levels ever in history. In America
the unemployment rate reached nearly 25% at its
peak.

12. 1941 with America entered into World War II.

America sided with Britain, France and the

Soviet Union against Germany, Italy, and
Japan.
The European part of the war ended with

Germany's surrender in May 1945. Japan
surrendered in September 1945, after the U.S.
dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

13. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 32nd President

(1933-45)
He created the New Deal to provide relief for

the unemployed,
recovery of the economy, and reform of the

economic and banking systems, through
various agencies, such as:
Works Project Administration (WPA),
National Recovery Administration (NRA),
Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA).

14. 1947 - US enunciates policy of aid for nations

it deems threatened by communism in what
became known as the Truman Doctrine. Cold
War with Soviet Union begins.
1948 - America's programme to revive ailing

post-war European economies - the Marshall
Plan - comes into force. Some $13bn is
disbursed over four years and the plan is
regarded as a success.

15. 1968 - Black civil rights leader Martin Luther

King assassinated.
1963 - President John F Kennedy

assassinated; Lyndon Johnson becomes
president.

16. On May 25, 1961, when

President John F. Kennedy
challenged the nation to
landing a man on the Moon
before the end of the decade,
he struck a responsive chord
with the American people.
The Apollo program, created

to meet the goal of landing
men on the Moon, enlisted
20,000 companies, hundreds
of thousands of individuals,
and some 25.5 billion dollars.
On July 20, 1969, astronauts

of the Apollo 11 mission
became the first humans to
set foot on the Moon. The
Moon landing was a stunning
achievement that commanded
world attention.

17. In a TV address, Nixon announces his resignation in the wake
of the Watergate scandal, over a 1972 break-in at the
Democratic Party headquarters. Gerald Ford is sworn-in as his
successor.
quot;Watergatequot; is now an all-encompassing term used to refer to:
• political burglary
• bribery
• extortion
• Phone tapping
• conspiracy
• obstruction of justice
• destruction of evidence
• tax fraud
• illegal use of government agencies such as the CIA and the FBI
• illegal campaign contributions
• use of public money for private purposes.

18. 1973 - Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed. The campaign had claimed some

58,000 American lives.
1979 - US embassy in Tehran, Iran, seized by radical students. The 444-day

hostage crisis - including a failed rescue attempt in 1980 - impacts on Carter's
popularity and dominates the 1980 presidential election campaign.
1983 - US invades Caribbean nation of Grenada, partly prompted by its

concerns over the island's ties with Cuba.
1986 - US warplanes bomb Libyan cities. quot;Irangatequot; scandal uncovered,

revealing that proceeds from secret US arms sales to Iran were used illegally to
fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua
1989 - US troops invade Panama, oust its government and arrest its leader,

one-time Central Intelligence Agency informant General Manuel Noriega, on
drug-trafficking charges.
1991 - US forces play dominant role in war against Iraq, which was triggered

by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and ended with the expulsion of Iraqi troops from
that country.

19. 2001 11 September - Four passenger aircraft

are hijacked and crashed into the World Trade
Center in New York, the US Defense
Department - the Pentagon - in Washington
DC and into a field in Pennsylvania; 3,025
people are killed in the attacks.
It caused panic for the country along with

much anger and grief.
Eventually the War in Iraq would follow.


20. Barack Obama

became the first
majority party African
American candidate
for president
Defeated Republican

John McCain and was
inaugurated on
January 20, 2009

21. Americanhistory.si.edu

http://www.mrnussbaum.com/history/histor

y.htm
http://watergate.info/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/countr

y_profiles/1230058.stm