Università di Roma Tor Vergata
Letteratura Anglo-americana
I A (per tutti i CC.LL tranne LLEM) e II-III A (per tutti i CC.LL)
a.a. 2009-10
Coordinate storiche(traccia)a cura di Elèna Mortara
1855-1861
1857 - Supreme Court Dred Scott decision denies citizenship to African Americans
1861 –Abraham Lincoln President of the U.S.A. (1861-65; assassinated in 1865)
Guerra Civile (1861-65)
e Emancipazione degli schiavi
Civil War
(The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008)
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information)Civil War in U.S. history, conflict (1861-65) between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy . It is generally known in the South as the War between the States and is also called the War of the Rebellion (the official Union designation), the War of Secession, and the War for Southern Independence. The name Civil War is most widely accepted.
1861 South Carolina batteries fire on U.S. fort, initiating the Civil War; Southern states secede from the Union and found the Confederate States of America
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Battle of Gettysburg and Gettysburg Address
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008
Gettysburg Address, speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the national cemetery on the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, Pa. It is one of the most famous and most quoted of modern speeches. The final version of the address prepared by Lincoln, differing in detail from the spoken address, reads:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. […]”
Ricostruzione
Reconstruction
(The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 )The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information)
Reconstruction 1865-77, in U.S. history, the period of readjustment following the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War , the defeated South was a ruined land. The physical destruction wrought by the invading Union forces was enormous, and the old social and economic order founded on slavery had collapsed completely, with nothing to replace it. The 11 Confederate states somehow had to be restored to their positions in the Union and provided with loyal governments, and the role of the emancipated slaves in Southern society had to be defined.
Gli Emendamenti (1865-70)
Constitution of the United States
(N.B. The first 10 Amendments are known as “ the Bill of Rights”)
Amendments 13-15(
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XIV
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.
Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
AMENDMENT XV
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870.
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude--
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Espansione verso il West
American Westward Expansion
Westward Expansion(
Traditionally, when one thinks of the expansion of the American West, the event most likely to come to mind is the California Gold Rush of 1849. While that profitable discovery did boost California's population by 80,000 eager prospectors, there remained an awful lot of land between the PacificCoast and, say, St. Louis, Missouri. "Why mention St. Louis?" you might be asking. Because in actuality the young United States started exploring the vast land mass to the west from that very point and almost fifty years before those gold nuggets started hitting the pan in California.
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress calling for an expedition into the area west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. He felt that an intelligent military man with perhaps a dozen hand-picked men could successfully chart the entire route and do it on an appropriation of roughly $2,500. Jefferson's message was secret because France owned the territory in question and such an expedition would surely be considered trespassing.
Then in July of the same year, Napoleon of France, in a surprise move, offered the whole LouisianaTerritory to the United States for $15,000,000. America accepted and overnight the United States grew by about one million square miles, from the Mississippi to the Rockies and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. (etc.)
THE EXPANSION OF THE AMERICAN WEST (
Key Dates (1803-1890)
1803 – LOUISIANA PURCHASE.
1804 - Under order of President Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition depart from St.Louis, Mo., on May 14, to chart a course to the Pacific Ocean.
1841 - First emigrant wagon train for California. Forty-seven people leave Independence, Mo., on May 1, and reach California on November 4.
1842 - Settlement ofOregonbegins via the Oregon Trail.
1845 – Texas Annexation.
1847 - After violent clashes with settlers over polygamy, Mormons leave Nauvoo, Ill., and head for the West under Brigham Young. They eventually settle at Salt Lake City, Utah.
1846-48 – U.S.-MEXICAN WAR.
1848 – CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH. Gold discovered January 24 in California.
1848 - In February, Mexico ceded claims to Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and portions of Colorado.U.S. pays Mexico $15 million.
1849 - 80,000 prospectors emigrate to California to follow the gold boom.
1861 - First transcontinental telegraph line completed October 24.
1862 - Homestead Act was approved on May 20, grants free family farms to settlers.
1866 - Completion of two successful transatlantic cables
1869 -TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADcompleted; Central Pacific construction crews composed largely of Chinese laborers; golden spike driven at Promontory, Utah, May 10, marking the junction of Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways.
1890- Census Bureau declares frontier “closed” • Seventh Cavalry massacre at Wounded Knee ends Native American armed resistance to U.S. government • Ellis Island Immigration Station opens
La Frontiera
Frederick Jackson Turner(historian)
“THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY” (1893)
“In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development. […]
[…] This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object of attention by writers like Professor von Holst, occupies its important place in American history because of its relation to westward expansion. […]”
The “Gilded Age”(late 19th c.)
Post-Reconstruction era: Industrial and population expansion, , industrial economy, corporate dominance, wealth polarization, creation of national transportation and communication network etc. The term was coined by Mark Twain and and Charles Dudley Warner from their 1873 satirical novel The Gilded Age. A Tale of Today. (Cfr.
Immigrazione
Immigration to the United States(
From 1820 to 1930, the United States received about 60% of the world's immigrants. Population expansion in developed areas of the world, improved methods of transportation, and U.S. desire to populate available space were all factors in this phenomenon. Through the 19th cent., the United States was in the midst of agricultural, then industrial, expansion. The desire for cheap, unskilled labor and the profits to be made importing immigrants fueled the movement. Immigrants were largely responsible for the rapid development of the country, and their high birthrates did much to swell the U.S. population. Often, however, immigrants formed distinct ethnic neighborhoods, tending to remain somewhat isolated from the wider culture. Frequently exploited, some immigrants were accused by organized labor of lowering wages and living standards, though other groups of immigrants rapidly became mainstays of the labor movement. Opposition was early manifested by organizations and in violent anti-Chinese riots on the West Coast.
Restrictions placed on immigration were often based on race or nationality. There were also restrictions against the entrance of diseased persons, paupers, and other undesirables, and laws were passed for the deportation of aliens. The first permanent quota law was passed in 1924; it also provided for a national origins plan to be put into effect in 1929.
1880s- Immigrazione italiana
In the 1880s Italy was one of the most overcrowded countries in Europe and many began to consider the possibility of leaving Italy to escape low wages and high taxes. Most of these immigrants were from rural communities with very little education. From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. A survey carried out that most planned to return once they had built up some capital.
Most Italians found unskilled work in America's cities. From 1900 to 1910 over 2,100,00 arrived. Of these, around 40 per cent eventually returned to Italy.
Willing to work long hours on low wages, the Italians now began to rival the Irish for much of the unskilled work available in industrial areas. This sometimes led to hostilities breaking out between the two groups of workers.
During the period 1820 and 1920 over 4,190,000 people emigrated from Italy to the United States. Only Ireland (4,400,000) and Germany(5,500,000) came anywhere near these figures.
In the 1930s a large number of Italians who had opposed the fascist rule of B arrived in the United States. This included Enrico Fermi, Emilio Sgre, Arturo Toscanini, and Gaetano Salvemini By the Second World War there were more people of Italian stock living in New York City than in Rome.
Ill. Italian Family arriving in New York in 1905 . (fonte:
1881-1924 - Immigrazione ebraica
There were approximately 250,000 Jews in the United States by 1880, many of them being the educated, and largely secular, German Jews, although a minority population of the older Sephardic Jewish families remained influential.
Jewish immigration to the United States increased dramatically in the early 1880s, as a result of persecution in parts of Eastern Europe. Most of these new immigrants also were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, though most came from the poor rural populations of the Russian Empire and the Pale of Settlement, located in modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Over 2,000,000 Jews arrived between the late nineteenth century and 1924, when the Immigration Act of 1924 and the National Origins Quota of 1924 restricted immigration. Most settled in New York Cityand its immediate environs (New Jersey, etc.), establishing what became one of the world's major concentrations of Jewish population.
(fonte:
F.A. Bartholdi's statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World" was erected on Bedloe's Island [called Liberty Island in 1956] in New York harbor in 1885.
Turn of the Century (1890-1914)
Gli U.S.sulla scena internazionale
By 1900 the American nation had established itself as a world power. The West was won. The frontier -- the great fact of 300 years of American history -- was no more. The continent was settled from coast to coast…
Henry Ford had built his first gasoline engine car in 1892 and the world's first auto race was held in Chicago in 1896. With the founding of the Ford Motor Company in 1903, the age of the automobile was underway.
By 1900, telephones were in wide use. Cities were being electrified. Moving pictures were a curiosity. Guglielmo Marconi was conducting experiments that would lead to the development of the radio, and the Wright brothers were at work on a heavier-than-air flying machine.
Cities were growing. New wealth and devastating fires produced a boom in urban construction. Architects Richardson, Hunt, McKim, Mead, and White flourished; Sullivan pioneered the skyscraper and his protégé, Frank Lloyd Wright, was beginning his career in Chicago…
This was a time of both confidence and ferment. In the cities and the states, political "Progressives" were coming to power, experimenting with reforms such as women's suffrage, direct election of United States senators, and laws setting minimum wages, work standards…Followers of the Progressive movement believed in the perfectibility of man and his society… The movement was on the rise; two of the presidents were Progressives: Republican Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) and Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1913-21).
The Spanish-American War of 1898. - The United States became an imperialist power with the taking of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and the later annexation ofHawaii.
A number of world's fairs were staged in the turn of the century period (the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo). Like the Spanish-American War, world's fairs both contributed to and resulted from increasing American interest in the globe. They celebrated the nation's own technological achievements, from infant incubators to the electric lights (frequently featured in titles from the Edison company).
(Adapted from:
La grande città come “magnete”, “giungla”, nuova Frontiera
Immigrati e migrazioni interne (dal Midwest, dal Sud, etc.)
Arrivo a New York, inizio 1900
“Aliens”, “Greenhorns” e Identità Americana
(Dibattito,1907-1924)
1907 H. James, The American Scene immigrants as “aliens”
1908 Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot (play) [America as a “Melting Pot;” Assimilation]
1915 “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” (essay in The Nation, republ. in 1924)
[America as an “orchestra”; Cultural Pluralism]
1920s Spread of racism (white supremacy groups such as the Klu Klux Klan, 1915; hate against