Showing papers in "The Journal of American History in 1972"

Children and youth in America : a documentary history

Abstract: PART 5: Juvenile Delinquency 1. Inertia and Innovation in the Care of Juvenile Delinquents A. Continuing Problems B. New Approaches 2.The Federal Government and Juvenile Delinquency A. Juvenile Delinquency as a National Concern B. Congressional Action 3. The Juvenile Court and Legal Issues A. Debate over the Court B. Legal Rights of Delinquents PART 6: Health Care for Children Old Problems and Youth 1. Development of Federal-State Programs in the New Deal and World War 2 A. Maternal and Child Health and Crippled Children's Services in the Social Security Act B. Child Health in World War 2 and the Postwar Era 2. Health Problems and Services for Children and Youth Since World War 2 A. Progress and Problems B. Expansion of Federal--State Maternal and Child Health and Crippled Children's Programs C. additional Programs and National Research Institutes 3. Mental Health and Retardation A. Mental Health B. Mental Retardation PART 7: Education 1. The Roosevelt Era A. Education in Depression and War B. Theories of Education 2. Education of Children of Minority Groups: New Trends and Old Problems A. Educational Experiences of Black Children B. Outlawing School Segregation C. The Education of Indian Children 3. Education Adjusts to the Cold War A. The Issue of Loyalty B. The National Interest in Educational Improvement C. New Programs for Government 4. Education and Reform A. Federal Initiatives in Support of Education B. Desegregation of the Schools C. Church and State D. Higher Education E. Education of Handicapped Children Chronology: Event Relating to the History of the Health, Education, and Welfare of Children and Youth, 1933-1973 1868 Selected Bibiliography 1915 Index 1958 1987

Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox

Abstract: A MERICAN historians interested in tracing the rise of liberty, democracy, and the common man have been challenged in the past two decades by other historians, interested in tracing the history of oppression exploitation, and racism. The challenge has been salutary, because it has made us examine more directly than historians have hitherto been willing to do, the role of slavery in our early history. Colonial historians, in particular, when writing about the origin and development of American institutions have found it possible until recently to deal with slavery as an exception to everything they had to say. I am speaking about myself but also about most of my generation. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who have insisted that slavery was something more than an exception, that one fifth of the American population at the time of the Revolution is too many people to be treated as an exception.' We shall not have met the challenge simply by studying the history of that one fifth, fruitful as such studies may be, urgent as they may be. Nor shall we have met the challenge if we merely execute the familiar maneuver of turning our old interpretations on their heads. The temptation is already apparent to argue that slavery and oppression were the dominant features of American history and that efforts to advance liberty and equality were the exception, indeed no more than a device to divert the masses while their chains were being fastened. To dismiss the rise of liberty and equality in American history as a mere sham is not only to ignore hard facts, it is also to evade the problem presented by those facts. The rise of liberty and equality in this country was accompanied by the rise of slavery. That two

Eleanor and Franklin : the story of their relationship, based on Eleanor Roosevelt's private papers

Abstract: The author combines research and excerpts from Hyde Park papers to illuminate the forty-five-year marriage of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s

Abstract: X\/HEN the reality of events runs counter to the moral imperative of an era, reasonable men join fanatics in rejecting quiet argument and compromise for more vigorous action. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 marked such an occasion. Long uneasy with the drift and thrust of public action, antislavery men had been alarmed by the threat and then the reality of Texas annexation and war with Mexico. The hopes which the Wilmot Proviso and the Free Soil party had momentarily raised were rudely dashed by the Compromise of 1850. In the decade which followed, both antislavery political moderates and Garrisonian radicals evolved a new style. Openly defying government, deliberately and persistently breaking the law, and explicitly tolerating violence, they desperately searched for a new tactic to embrace and achieve their aims. Abolition had always been radical. From the adoption of immediate and uncompensated emancipation and the organization of the American AntiSlavery Society in 1833, subgroups continually emerged going beyond majority opinion within the antislavery societies and demanding ever more extreme programs. By 1840, Garrisonian perfectionism and multi-reform millenialism had driven both orthodox clericals and Liberty party supporters from the American Anti-Slavery Society's ranks. But the rump did not long remain coherent. During the 1840s, it too shattered and divided over the issues of "coming out" and disunion. By the late 1830s ultra-Garrisonians had developed a strong anticlerical and apolitical position. They had sought to purge churches of fellowship-

Franklin Roosevelt and Indochina

Abstract: THE response to political change and nationalism in Southeast Asia ranked among the important challenges encountered by the United States during World War II. The disruptions caused by the war forced America to define its interests in the struggles of Asian peoples to end European imperialism. The Japanese overthrew European predominance in Southeast Asia. Within Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, French Indochina received the greatest American attention because President Franklin D. Roosevelt was determined to prevent resumption of French rule and to establish instead an international trusteeship which would lead to eventual independence. The trusteeship plan was Roosevelt's most conspicuous postwar goal for an area that had been part of a European empire. The pledge of the Atlantic Charter to recognize the rights of peoples to self-determination, augmented by occasional assurances that this applied to all areas of the world, stood as the basic policy on imperialism, but for most areas of the colonial world that policy remained a vague and platitudinous goal rather than a basis for specific policy and action. For example, in 1942 Roosevelt took an active interest in the impasse between the British government and the Indian National Congress, but he restricted his role to that of a concerned third party and avoided any direct intervention., Yet, in Indochina, which had its own complexities and about which Roosevelt, the state department, and the American public had scant knowledge, Roosevelt embraced a postwar plan. The Indochina policy resulted in large part from Roosevelt's attitude toward the French. The collapse of the French resistance against Germany in 1940

The Other Side of Isolationism: The Establishment of the First World Bank, 1929–1930

Abstract: THE Young conference of 1929 was more than another act in the reparations scenario., Out of the tangle of reparations emerged a plan for a world financial institution, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).2 The leadership for the creation of BIS came from a small group of international bankers in New York City. Despite past rivalries and differences, these international bankers worked together to establish a world financial order that would incorporate the federal principle of the American central banking system. Cooperation among reserve banks in the Federal Reserve System (FRS), New York City's international financiers believed, not only contributed to the stability of American money and credit but also strengthened the leadership of New York City in American banking. Prominent among these bankers were Owen D. Young, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont, S. Parker Gilbert, Gates W. McGarrah, and Jackson Reynolds,, who, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,

The Cold War and the Election of 1948

Abstract: THE impact of foreign policy on American presidential elections in the Cold War years has been relatively neglected by historians. The surprising upset victory of Harry S. Truman in 1948 provides a clear example of the tendency to explain the electoral process primarily in terms of domestic considerations. In the most recent account of the 1948 election, Irwin Ross presents a modified version of the explanation first put forth by Samuel Lubell in 1949. Truman's victory, according to Ross and Lubell, represented the continuation of the New Deal coalition originally created by Franklin D. Roosevelt. By hitting hard at the Republican Eightieth Congress and reminding workers, farmers, and ethnic groups how much they owed to the Democratic party for their improved economic status, Truman was able to carve out a narrow but decisive victory over Thomas E. Dewey. Indeed, Lubell claims that only the relative apathy of the voters in 1948 prevented Truman from winning a landslide triumph.1 Other writers tend to endorse this domestic explanation, though Jules Abels notes that Dewey's decision to forego criticism of Truman's foreign policy-after the Berlin blockade reached crisis proportions in July

Truman and the National Security Council: 1945-1947

Abstract: tion. Although there were many political reasons why the council idea was promoted by various national leaders after World War II, its immediate impetus came from the administrative chaos of the Roosevelt administration. Harried wartime officials wanted to avoid such confusion in any future war. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall discussed the mechanism of the British cabinet secretariat with Winston Churchill as early as 1943. Churchill sent descriptions of the secretariat to Marshall who circulated them to Harry Hopkins and Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to the President, and vigorously advocated the idea to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.3 Forrestal, apparently convinced of the need to establish something like the British war cabinet in the American system, began a long-term effort to bring the defense services together with the state department and other vital agencies in the formulation of coordinated foreign policies.4 He told Hopkins, in November 1944, that an organization similar to the joint chiefs of staff needed to be

The New Deal and the Negro Community: Toward a Broader Conceptualization

Abstract: WITH rare exceptions, research that evaluates the significance of the New Deal public housing and emergency work programs for Negroes has been conceptualized around certain well-defined questions. Most scholars who have approached the subject have focused their attention on the extent to which Negroes were included in these programs in an effort to assess the degree to which the New Deal was successful in alleviating the problems which Negroes faced as a result of the Depression, especially unemployment and the need for low cost housing. These studies have noted that, although Negroes received less assistance than their relatively greater needs warranted, they also received more than their proportionate share. Largely on this basis scholars concluded that the New Deal symbolized a salutary turning point in the attitude of the federal government toward Negroes., However, if research is conceptualized on a broader basis to include not only questions relating to the extent of Negro participation in the New Deal programs but also questions concerning the impact of these programs on the anatomy of the Negro community, notable qualifications are added to this conclusion and new insight is gained into the problems which the government faced at the local level. If the experience of Cleveland Negroes is representative, it is apparent that the New Deal's inclusion of Negroes in programs designed to relieve the special problems created by the Depression must be balanced against certain adverse side effects which these programs had on the social structure of

The Washington Administration's Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion

Abstract: ONE of the fundamental questions raised in the debates over the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 was on what foundation the ultimate authority of government rested. When they discussed the problem men who differed over the Constitution as much as James Madison and Richard Henry Lee agreed that government was based either on law or on force and that law was the only firm basis on which to build a healthy republican society. And they also agreed that once the law failed, either through individual disobedience or riot and rebellion, force would be necessary to restore order and compel citizens to fulfill their social obligations.' The first test of this doctrine came in 1794 with the Whiskey Rebellion, a clear-cut case of the failure of law and the necessity for coercion, at least to the Federalist leaders who were responsible for executing the laws. Yet a question which had been wholly neglected in the discussion six years earlier was how force should be applied and how physical coercion could restore respect for the law. Historians have also missed this problem. Prevailing interpretations of the rebellion, whether sympathetic to the rebels or to the Washington administration, have presented a picture of a federal executive dominated by the advice and philosophy of Alexander Hamilton moving quickly and eagerly to crush the insurrection with force. The only major historiographic controversy has been over whether Hamilton provoked the rebellion in order to enhance the government's stature with a show of military power.2

The Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944

Abstract: iNOT all violent confrontations of World War II occurred on foreign battlefields. Bitter fighting also took place on the riot-torn streets of several American cities. Racial tensions that had been growing throughout the war could no longer be contained by 1943. Within one three month period Los Angeles, Detroit, and then Harlem suffered serious disruptions. Urban areas that remained calm were nonetheless equally vulnerable. And when, in August 1944, a massive transit strike threatened job opportunities for blacks in Philadelphia, the next domestic battle seemed ready to begin. The Philadelphia transit strike affected the entire city. For a full week traction employees protested the upgrading of eight Negroes to positions formerly restricted to whites. Refusing to operate their vehicles, the strikers made normal activity impossible for residents and commuters. The walkout inconvenienced whites, antagonized blacks, and hampered war production in the large metropolitan area. Fearful of racial violence, local authorities took emergency measures to preserve order. They were more successful in preventing a riot than in ending the dispute, however, and finally needed federal troops to revive the City of Brotherly Love. Trouble in Philadelphia had been brewing for several years. The city, long an important military production center, supplied "everything from battleships to braid for uniforms" as soon as World War II began.' Flourishing industrial activity attracted newcomers to Philadelphia, and immigration changed the city's complexion. Most significant was the increase in the black population. Between April 1, 1940, and April 1, 1945, the 36,000 Negroes who entered Philadelphia increased the number of blacks to nearly 300,000 out of a total population of about 2,000,000.2 Scattered

Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security after World War I

Abstract: Historians of the fight between Woodrow Wilson and the Senate over the Versailles Treaty have generally shared the president’s perspective. From Denna Frank Fleming and W. Stull Holt through Ruhl J. Bartlett and Thomas A. Bailey to Selig Adler and John Chalmers Vinson, they have regarded the League of Nations as a valuable contribution to international relations, while viewing its Republican critics as negative and partisan politicians. Arno J. Mayer, who recently offered a significant account of the politics of peacemaking after World War I, adhered to this traditional interpretation. If the Republicans rather than Wilson had drafted the peace treaty with Germany, he concluded, “it would hardly have fostered a healthier international climate for the United States, for Europe, and for the world.”1 Vinson pictured the controversy over the League of Nations and the election of 1920 as a “referendum for isolation,” while Adler interpreted the defeat of the Versailles Treaty and the victory of Warren G. Harding as evidence of “the isolationist impulse.” John Milton Cooper, Jr., examined the origins of postwar American isolationism during the period of neutrality before 1917. He argued that before the United States intervened in World War I the Republicans had begun to coalesce around an isolationist position in opposition to Wilson’s internationalism.2