After the Civil War, in 1865, the United States changed its Constitution to make slavery illegal. For a few years, black people were able to vote, and serve in Congress. But soon northern people lost interest in helping the black people, and racist white people forced the black people to stop voting and stop trying to get elected to Congress. But also after the Civil War the United States government got to have much more power over the states than it had before. Now it was clear that the states had to do what the United States government said, unless the Supreme Court said it was against the Constitution.

In the western part of North America, however, many people had their own governments and were not part of the United States or Canada. The Navajo, the Ute, the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Chinook and the Inuit are good examples. Among these people, most government was at the level of the big man, although the Sioux began to unite under chiefs like Sitting Bull.

In the late 1800's, as more and more poor people began to live in cities and work in factories, poor city men became important to winning elections (women still couldn't vote). To get their votes, men who wanted to be mayors or congressmen or presidents promised to fix up the poor parts of cities where these men lived. The Progressive movement got started. Progressive people thought that both the states and the United States government should work harder to help poor people. Government officials like mayors and congressmen should tell businesses how to treat their workers, and how much to pay the workers. Officials should decide what kinds of houses poor people should live in, and make sure that their food and water were clean and safe. All kids should be able to go to school. During this time, the government did work on a lot of these problems.

By 1900, most of the people of the western part of North America had been forced on to reservations or under the power of the United States or Canada, although there were still some independent Inuit groups.

The United States government got even more power during the 1900's. In 1913, the United States government got the right to collect income tax. With this new tax, the United States government got a lot more money, and it used that money to get more power over the states. During the Depression, in the 1930's, for instance, President Roosevelt started to give welfare payments to people who couldn't find jobs, and he started the Social Security program to give payments to everyone who was old, so that old, sick people would not go hungry.
President Roosevelt also used income tax money to fight World War II, which was very expensive.

After the war, presidents continued to spend the income tax money both on welfare and Social Security and on bigger and bigger weapons. By the 1960's, President Johnson and others extended this Progressive view to protect the rights, first of black men, and then of religious minorities women, people with disabilities, and finally of gay people, over the wishes of the states.

Email to a friend | Save to del.icio.us/digg | Get more help with your question | How do I cite this page?

ancient greece - ancient rome
mesopotamia - ancient china
middle ages - ancient india
islamic empire - ancient egypt
africa - north america

Log in/Subscribe Now/Log out

Lesson plans for Teachers

Bookmark this site!