CHAPTER 17 Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad,
1890–1900
This chapter concentrates on the limitations of freedom, including those affecting farmers, immigrants, blacks, women, and colonial
subjects. The chapter opens with the Homestead Strike, which demonstrated that neither a powerful union nor public opinion could
influence the conduct of the largest corporations. Farmers also illustrated that not everyone benefited from the prosperity of the indus-
trial revolution. The chapter examines how farmers mobilized into a political force culminating in the 1892 organization of the Popu-
list Party. Attempting to build a broad base, the Populists courted labor, women, and black farmers, but their party dissolved after the
defeat of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The chapter then explores the New South. After Reconstruction, blacks faced disenfran-
chisement, threat from the lynch rope, and Jim Crow laws sanctioned by the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Booker
T. Washington took a different approach in dealing with the limitations of freedom put on blacks, preaching a policy of accommoda-
tion and vocational education. The new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe faced growing restrictions on their freedom in
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Homestead Strike
A. Andrew Carnegie owned steel mills at Homestead, Pennsylvania, and wanted to run them without union contracts.
B. In July of 1892, a pitched battle took place between 300 private company policemen and armed strikers, resulting in several
lives lost and defeat for the union in the nation’s most famous labor strike.
II. The Populist Challenge
A. The Farmers’ Revolt
2. Farmers sought to improve their condition through the Farmers’ Alliance.
B. The People’s Party
2. The Populists embarked on a remarkable effort of community organization and education.
C. The Populist Platform
D. The Populist Coalition
1. The Populists made remarkable efforts to unite black and white small farmers on a common political and economic
program.
2. While many blacks refused to abandon Lincoln’s party, others were attracted by the Populist program.
3. The Populist movement also engaged the energies of thousands of reform–minded women with farm and labor
backgrounds.
4. In 1892, presidential candidate James Weaver won over 1 million votes.
E. The Government and Labor
1. The severe depression that began in 1893 led to increased conflict between capital and labor.
a. Coxey’s Army
2. The Pullman Strike of 1894 saw the labor leader Eugene Debs jailed.
F. Populism and Labor
G. Bryan and Free Silver
1. In 1896, Democrats and Populists joined to support William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.
a. Called for free silver
H. The Campaign of 1896
1. Republicans nominated the Ohio governor William McKinley.
4. McKinley’s victory shattered the political stalemate that had persisted since 1876 and created one of the most enduring
political majorities in American history.
III. The Segregated South
A. The Redeemers in Power
1. Upon achieving power, the Redeemers moved to undo Reconstruction as much as possible.
a. Public school systems hardest hit
B. The Failure of the New South Dream
C. Black Life in the South
1. As the most disadvantaged rural southerners, black farmers suffered the most from the region’s condition.
a. Blacks owned less land in 1900 than they had at the end of Reconstruction.
3. Blacks were barred from skilled and supervisory positions, and the labor market remained rigidly segregated.
D. The Kansas Exodus
2. Most African-Americans had little alternative but to stay in the South.
E. The Transformation of Black Politics
1. Political opportunities became more and more restricted.
2. The banner of political leadership passed to black women activists.
F. The Elimination of Black Voting
2. Between 1890 and 1906, every southern state enacted laws or constitutional provisions meant to eliminate the black vote.
4. The elimination of black and white voters could not have been accomplished without the approval of the North.
5. Booker T. Washington, a former slave, emphasized vocational education over political equality.
G. The Law of Segregation
2. John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter on the Court.
H. Segregation and White Domination
2. The point was not so much to keep the races apart as to ensure that when they came into contact with each other, whites
held the upper hand.
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes a section from W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black
I. The Rise of Lynching
2. Many white southerners considered preserving the purity of white womanhood a justification of extralegal vengeance.
a. The charge of rape was a “bare lie.”
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes a portion of “Lynch Law in all Its Phases” (1893), a
J. Politics, Religion, and Memory
2. School history books emphasized happy slaves and the evils of Reconstruction.
IV. Redrawing the Boundaries
A. The New Immigration and the New Nativism
B. Immigration Restriction
1. The new immigration produced a resurgence of racial nationalism in the United States.
3. Exclusion was central to efforts to build political communities as older sources of unity splintered.
4. Northern and western states experimented with ways to eliminate “undesirable” voters.
5. Who Is an American? (Primary Source document feature) features part of William Birney’s “Deporting Mohammedans”
(1897), a letter he wrote protesting the deportation of Muslims from New York City.
C. Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights
2. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred the Chinese from the United States.
4. Chinese demands for equal rights forced the Supreme Court to define the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment.
5. Fong Yue Ting (1893) authorized the federal government to expel Chinese aliens without due process of law.
6. Exclusion profoundly shaped the experiences of Chinese-Americans.
D. The Rise of the AFL
1. The rise of the AFL reflected a shift away from a broadly reformist past to more limited goals.
3. During the 1890s, the labor movement became less and less inclusive.
E. The Women’s Era
2. Through a network of women’s clubs, temperance associations, and social reform organizations, women exerted a
3. The center of gravity of feminism shifted toward an outlook more in keeping with prevailing racial and ethnic norms.
V. Becoming a World Power
A. The New Imperialism
1. America was a second-rate power in the 1880s.
B. American Expansionism
2. Most Americans who looked overseas were interested in expanded trade, not territorial possessions.
C. The Lure of Empire
2. A small group of late nineteenth-century thinkers actively promoted American expansionism.
3. Hawaii was long sought after by Americans and was annexed by the United States in 1898.
5. Unifying patriotism dates to the 1890s.
D. The “Splendid Little War”
1. Cuba had fought for independence since 1868.
3. Admiral George Dewey defeated a Spanish fleet at Manila Bay.
E. Roosevelt at San Juan Hill
2. National hero Teddy Roosevelt was elected governor of New York.
F. An American Empire
1. In the treaty with Spain ending the war, the United States acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific island of
3. In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay announced the Open-Door policy with China.
G. The Philippine War
2. Emilio Aguinaldo led a fight against American colonialism.
3. The McKinley administration justified U.S. intervention in the Philippines on the grounds that its aim was to “uplift and
civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos.
H. Citizens or Subjects?
2. America’s triumphant entry into the ranks of imperial powers sparked an intense debate over the relationship between
political democracy, race, and American citizenship.
4. In the twentieth century, the territories acquired in 1898 would follow different paths.
a. Hawaii achieved statehood in 1959.
I. Drawing the Global Color Line
1. American racial attitudes had a global impact in the Age of Empire.
3. American segregation and disenfranchisement became models for Australia and South Africa as they formed new
governments.
J. “Republic or Empire?”
1. The Anti-Imperialist League argued that empire was incompatible with democracy.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What caused workers to go on strike at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel plant?
• Describe the plan of the Farmers’ Alliance.
• What were the goals of the Populist Party? Why were they considered radical in their day?
• Who was Eugene Debs?
• Discuss Booker T. Washington’s background and his plan for blacks. How does understanding his background help to explain the
logic behind his message?
• Why is it important to note that slavery became a minor issue in the public’s memory of the Civil War? How does this affect the
progress, or lack thereof, that African-Americans can make in the future? How important is memory in other historical events?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
African-American Perspectives
Booker T. Washington
Chinese-Americans
The Chinese Exclusion Act (PBS, American Experience, documentary, 2 hrs., 2018)
The Foreign Missionary Movement in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
The People’s Party and the Election of 1896
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Hawaiian Annexation
Spanish-American War
The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Blum, Edward, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 2007.
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Daniels, Roger. Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890–1924. Lanham, MD: Ivan R. Dee, 1997.
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: Random House, 2002.
Gilmore, Glenda. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1996.
Hoganson, Kristin L. Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2007.
LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963.
Lake, Marilyn, and Henry Reynolds. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Debate
Have the students portray the U.S. Senate as it debates the annexation of the Philippines in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Divide the class into two
2. Mapping Exercise
Lynch Mobs in the United States: Mapping Extralegal Executions
While lynchings of African-Americans were common in the South, they also took place elsewhere in the United States. Two different kinds of
maps in this activity allow students to study lynching as a southern practice and discuss the broader patterns of this type of violence in the United
States. The first map shows the number of lynchings of both blacks and whites that occurred between 1882 and 1968 in each state. The second
map depicts lynchings by state and county between 1900 and 1931.
A. Discussion Activities:
1. Ask students to survey the PBS map and make a list of the southern states with the most and the least lynchings. Why where lynchings
more common in some places than others?
2. Ask students to look at the distribution of lynchings by counties on the Library of Congress site. Why might some counties have been such
centers for lynch mobs and others relatively peaceful?
B. Group Activity: