An Abridged History of the United States

255 Pages·2003·1.01 MB·English

by  WILLIAM M. BRINTON

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES

BY WILLIAM M. BRINTON

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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 2

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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 3

Why Use the Internet for an American History Textbook?
In June, 1996 the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania held that the Communications Decency Act was
unconstitutional as violating the constitutional guarantee of free speech.
Plaintiffs in this case included the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), the American Library Association and a host of other interested
and scholarly groups and individual citizens who post materials on the
Internet. Janet Reno, in her capacity as Attorney General of the United
States, was defendant in this landmark case. The 67 page text may be seen
at 929 F. Supp. 824 or downloaded and printed from the ACLU on the
Internet. The United States has filed a Notice of Appeal, and in due course
this case will be argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. As
a lawyer myself -- retired after some forty-five years -- I hope that this
case may be accessed via Oyez Oyez, the words traditionally used by the
Clerk of the Court to open session.
Oyez Oyez has already performed a valuable function for historians. By
this date in 1996 -- September 6 -- it had digitized over fifty cases so that
Internet users may hear the voices of counsel arguing their case before the
highest court of the land. So far the cases accessible include subjects as
diverse as the Commerce Clause, Separation of Powers, Federalism,
Religious Freedom/Religious Establishment, Freedom of Expression,
Freedom of the Press, Privacy, Racial Equality and Due Process of Law.
By way of example, one may listen to the oral arguments of counsel in
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States decided on December 14, 1964. A
three-judge constitutional test of the public accommodations provisions of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A three-judge District Court had
permanently enjoined the motel from discrimination on account of race.
This case was one of a long line of cases striking down as unconstitutional
those laws enacted principally in the South after Plessy v. Ferguson
decided in 1896. It gave the white majority a license to erect barriers
blocking African-Americans from joining mainstream America on an
equal basis. They still have a long way to go as heard in the oral
arguments in Adarand v. Pena decided on June 12, 1995.
I have cited numerous decisions of the Supreme Court in An Abridged
History of the United States. In ways not familiar to the vast majority of
Americans, their lives have been shaped or changed by decisions of the
Supreme Court. Views of the Court often change as the individual justices
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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 4
bring their own agenda with them to the highest court of the land. Seven
justices were nominated by Republican presidents and confirmed by the
Senate; Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Associate Justices Scalia, O'Conner,
Thomas, Kennedy, Stevens and Souter. President Clinton has named two
justices; Charles Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
In ACLU v. Reno, et al, at the District Court made Findings of Fact. In
part one of them states: "In all, reasonable estimates are that as many as 40
million people around the world can and do access the enormously
flexible communications Internet medium. That figure is expected to grow
to 200 million Internet users by the year 1999." Approximately 65 percent
of them -- 130 million -- will live in the United States.
This is a huge market, and I have made it possible for these users to
download An Abridged History of the United States at no charge. I hope
Internet users will want to share my knowledge of history. I do not offer
this textbook as a scholarly treatise.
I graduated from Yale University in 1942 majoring in International
Relations and History, served as a Navy aviator from 1941-1945 -- my
carrier was sunk in October, 1944 during the Battle of the Philippine Sea -
- and returned to go through law school at the University of Virginia.
From 1948 to 1990 I practiced law in San Francisco, principally litigation
in the federal courts. In 1985, I started Mercury House from Scratch. It
published general interest books on the environment, some aspects of
history and current events as well as fiction. Mercury House has published
books in translation from French, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean and
Greek. As of late 1996 Mercury House had some 150 books in print. I
retired as its publisher in 1995 and took a year to write this textbook.

William M. Brinton
San Francisco
06 September 1996

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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 5

In November, 1995 the Department of Education issued its report on
the knowledge of American history on the part of 22,000 students in fifty
states. Lewis Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine, was utterly dismayed.
He wrote that "More than 50 percent of all high school seniors were
unaware of the Cold War. Nearly six of ten were bereft of even a primitive
understanding of where America came from ... For twenty years, the
ministers of American education (university deans as well as federal
bureaucrats) have been reporting signs of decay -- low SAT scores,
declining verbal aptitude and a general inability to find Tokyo on a map....
The news is familiar but it takes on a fresh urgency in the context of the
present mood of suspicion and resentment: Washington perceived as the
temple of doom, the nation betrayed by demogogues of all descriptions.
Our ignorance adds to our stores of anger. The practice of our democracy
depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that
playing in the World Series requires a bat and a ball."
I asked a high school teacher of American history why so many
students got turned off. Was it by boring textbooks, too much television,
or some mediocre teachers? "It's not really any of the above," he replied.
"They simply don't feel connected to history. They don't relate to it." Most
of today's parents have long commutes, more often than not at least two
hours one way; today's cities have run out of affordable housing, but that's
where both parents have jobs. The bottom-line result is less quality time
with growing children. So they feel left out and parents don't sense this
lack of "connectedness." Parents who may not have travelled outside the
United States, who have not seen Westminister Cathedral in London, for
example, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Berlin Wall, now levelled with
the end of the Cold War, the pyramids in Egypt, the Vatican in Rome, or
even Constitution Hall in Philadelphia cannot share their own experience
with their own children. Most of the history of Western Civilization is thus
very abstract and non-personal. The Constitution itself was drafted by
scholars familiar with their history and Western civilization.
Today, the way government operates, how members of our Congress
are elected, and how the judicial system functions are all determined by
the Constitution. It was ratified in 1789 and amended in 1791 by adding
the first ten amendments as a Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, for
example, guaranteed freedom of speech and the press. It was not until
1920, however, that women got the right to vote. Then, in 1971, the
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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 6
Twenty-Sixth Amendment provided that the voting age for all elections
was set at 18 years. It was ratified by the states in record time.
Until 1882, the individual states regulated immigration. In that year,
Congress enacted the Immigration Act of 1882 which imposed a federal
head tax of fifty cents per immigrant. This tax was challenged by those
who paid it, but the Supreme Court upheld Congressional power to
regulate immigration. The Head Money Cases, 112 U.S. 580 (1885).
Within seven years (1892), Ellis Island opened as the point of entry for
immigrants into the United States. Until it closed in 1954, approximately
12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. An estimated forty
percent of today's population of 260 million people can trace their ancestry
to those who entered the United States via Ellis Island. Over 122 distinct
ethnic groups brought their culture to the shores of America, making the
United States the most multicultural nation in the world. The countries
with the most migrants going through Ellis Island included Italy, Russia,
Hungary, Austria, Germany, England, Ireland, Sweden, Greece, Norway,
Turkey, and Scotland. More recently, China, other Asian nations, and
Vietnam were added to the countries of origin. The Internet offers an
American Studies Site that includes African American Studies, Asian
American Studies, Native American Studies, Latino and Chicano Studies,
and Other Race and Ethnic Studies.
The Internet also offers a Biodiversity Policy Briefing on Global
Resources and international efforts to prevent further environmental
degradation. The material was organized and made available to Internet
users by the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Three important policy vehicles for protecting biodiversity are the
Endangered Species Act, the National Biological Service of the
Department of the Interior, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. In
1993, this convention was signed by President Clinton, but a Republican
Senate has ended attempts to ratify this critical treaty.
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) offers an Internet campaign to
stop the World Bank from financing environmentally destructive projects.
Most of these projects are in the Third World. RAN also describes its
efforts to boycott products sold by the Mitsubishi Corporation, one of the
largest corporate destroyers of the world's forests in the Phillipines,
Malaysia, Papua, New Guinea, Bolivia, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, Canada,
and Siberia. The products sold by the Mitsubishi Corporation or by one of
its 190 interlinked companies worldwide include automobiles, trucks,
bicycles, television sets, VCRs, fax machines, microchips, Nikon cameras,
Kirin beer, Value Rent-A-Car, and the Bank of California. Protection of
the environment is now seen as a way of stabilizing the political
economies of Third World nations. A failure to consider their stability
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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 7
leads to the alternative, chaos and the collapse of order. Liberia is an
example, with anarchy in Monrovia, its capital.
Farmers in Liberia used destructive agricultural practices, probably
from the beginning of time. The nutrients in the soil have been depleted by
overtilled, overfertilized, and overirrigated earth. Excessive irrigation
depletes the water level. Additionally, the farmers used dangerous
pesticides-ones already labeled as unsafe in the United States. As a result,
farmers had to encroach further into the rainforest to find more arable land
after a few years at one location. Soon, the rainforest, as a complete
ecosystem, all but disappeared, and farmers had to abandon the soil. They
moved to the cities, where there were no jobs, housing or food for all these
new arrivals from the abandoned farms. The cities could not support the
influx of these rural migrants. Crime raged, tribal warfare erupted, and
disease spun out of control. Without waste treatment and disposal systems,
the rivers of Liberia were polluted beyond belief. This is the story of most
West African countries, such as Sierra Leone, Gabon, Togo, Guinea,
Ghana, Nigeria, Cìte d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso. Some of these countries
are either decayed or on the brink of decaying. With population pressures
and without internal resources -- Nigeria does have oil -- governments
weaken only to be replaced by private armies and urban chaos. It is time to
understand just what the environment is and the importance of its
preservation.
Robert D. Kaplan wrote "The Coming Anarchy" which was published
by The Atlantic Monthly in its February, 1994 issue. Random House
published his recent book, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn
of the 21st Century. Kaplan who had expanded his earlier article into a
441-page book, describes the environment as the "national security issue
of the early twenty-first century." The political and strategic impact of
surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation, soil erosion, water
depletion, air pollution, and possibly, rising sea levels on critical,
overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- are
developments that will prompt mass migrations and in turn, incite group
conflicts...." Resolution of the problems created by this chaos will be the
foreign policy challenge of the next decades, and only those versed in
history need apply.

William M. Brinton
San Francisco
August 1996

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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 8

In the Twentieth century, there were three great transforming events.
The Great Depression from 1929 to the outbreak of World War II, World
War II itself and the Vietnam War from 1960 to 1975. Before World War
II began, Americans lived in a world threatened by Germany's Nazis,
Italy's Fascists, and the Soviet Union's Communists. Japanese militarists
had invaded China in 1934 and threatened the entire Far East from Korea
to Singapore, and Indonesia. Japan had no oil to operate its industrial
machinery and had no raw materials to produce weapons. It had to buy
steel abroad to build its army, navy and aircraft. Its Greater East Asia Co-
prosperity Sphere visualized territorial expansion and military power.
In Europe, Germany occupied Austria in 1938 and claimed the
Sudetenland of Czechslovakia. Italy had colonies in Africa and wanted
more. So Benito Mussolini bombed helpless Ethiopia into submission in
1937. The Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 was the forerunner of a
far greater war involving the struggle against dictatorship, with both
Germany, Italy, and Russia providing weapons to the combatants. On July
18, 1936 Francisco Franco proclaimed a military rebellion and became
head of state a few months later as El Caudillo, the leader, of Spain's
Fascist Party. However, Franco did not defeat the leftist Popular Front
troops until just before the outbreak of war in Europe, April 1, 1939. Spain
remained relatively neutral during World War II.
The immediate cause of World War II was a total failure of will on the
part of Great Britain and France. Nothing was done when Hitler
announced in 1938 that Austria has a new province of Germany. Neville
Chamberlain, Britain's Prime Minister returned from Munich with a
useless piece of paper, Hitler's promise that he wanted no more
Lebensraum, or living space for Germans. This promise was broken on
September 1, 1939. World War II began on September 3, 1939. Two days
earlier, Adolf Hitler's Nazi forces had marched into Poland. In this
Blitzkrieg, the Nazi forces quickly acquired control of the air with Stuka
dive bombers and other aircraft now seen only in museums. German
Panzer divisions, supported by tanks seemed invincible. They were, and
Polish forces were soon defeated. Great Britain and France both had
treaties with Poland that required they intervene with their own forces in
defense of Poland. On September 3, 1939 both Great Britain and France
declared war on Germany.
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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 9

Europe in 1914 Europe in 1939
British troops began arriving in France to defend that country so ill-
prepared for war. Its leaders were living with a Maginot Line mentality.
The Maginot Line was a series of underground fortresses built on the
border between France and Germany. Unfortunately, its military architects
did not anticipate that German forces would invade France by marching
through Belgium and the Netherlands. This was the same invasion route
used by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm in World War I (1914 to
1918). By September 28, 1939 Hitler and Joseph Stalin divided up
conquered Poland and the treaty signed by both just before war broke out
allowed the Soviet Union to occupy Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. Nazi
forces were busy in early 1940. They defeated Noway and occupied
Yugoslavia and Greece. By June, 1940 Hitler's Nazi forces had occupied
Paris. The Japanese launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbour on
December 7, 1941, and most of the world was at war.
After gearing up for wartime production after the attack on Pearl
Harbour, the first landing of American troops in the near-European theater
of war occurred in November, 1942. They landed in French Morrocco and
fought across North Africa. Allied troops invaded Italy in late 1943 and
drove German and Italian forces northward in some of World War II's
bloodiest battles. Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected President of the United
States in 1952, was Supreme Commander of all allied forces in Europe.
He knew that infantry and tanks would win the war, but Eisenhower also
knew that control of the air was essential. American bombers were
produced almost on an assembly line basis, first the B-17 or Flying
Fortress, the B-24 Liberator, and later the B-29. British and American
aircraft flew almost daily missions to knock out German railway hubs and
that country's heavy industry.
After World War II, Germany lay in ashes, its major cities bombed, and
Italy was prostrate economically. The Soviet Union became an enemy of
the West with its plan to expand the reach of Communism, and the Cold
War began in 1947. It changed the way we lived and waged war.
For Russia, World War II began on June 22, 1941 when Hitler's
armored forces invaded the Soviet Union using a defeated Poland as a
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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 10
military springboard. Hitler's generals didn't like invading Russia over a
hundred years later; they remembered Napoleon's defeat by Russia.
Napoleon I invaded Czarist Russia in 1810 and was driven back by
Russian troops. Hitler, however, was Der Führer, so they followed orders.
Eventually, the Soviet Red Army drove these German forces back as far as
Berlin in 1945. Germany surrendered to the Allies in May, 1945. Adolf
Hitler took his own life in his Berlin bunker command post.
For the United States, World War II began on December 7, 1941, when
Japanese carrier-launched aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, sinking some
Navy vessels, including battleships and destroying most of the American
aircraft on the ground. Within four days days, President Franklin
Roosevelt had requested Congress to declare war against Japan, Germany,
and Italy. Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, had joined forces with Hitler only
after most of France was occupied by Hitler's Nazis in 1940. Four years
later, on June 6, 1944 Allied forces landed in Normandy and began the
series of battles that led to Berlin and Germany's surrender. In that
German capital, American, British, French, and Canadian troops met
troops of the Soviet Union's Red Army at the River Elbe.
Meeting of East &
West
American soldier &
Russian soldier shake
hands at the bank of the
River Elbe, 1945
The war in the Pacific used air power and forces from the Army and the
Marines to occupy the island chain from Midway to Okinawa, beginning
with the invasion of New Guinea and Guadalcanal in 1942. The carrier
battle of Midway in June, 1942 was probably the turning point of the war
in the Pacific. The Japanese Navy lost four carriers and was never again a
real force at sea. The United States Navy used Eniwetok as a huge harbor
for its supply line to ships, allowing them to refuel at sea and launch their
aircraft to provide air cover for troops. These troops invaded the
Mariannas, Guam, Tinian and Saipan, Iwo Jima, and finally the
Philippines in 1944 and early 1945. With Guam, the Army had a base
from which its B-29s could bomb Japan itself.
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