10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

“The Pequot War set up the tragic irony of American history; a nation founded on the highest ideals of individual liberty and freedom was built on slaughter and destruction of epic proportions.”

Gillon finds that the slaughter of Native Americans after the arrival of the English foreshadows the US being founded on and existing for nearly a century with the institution of slavery. The Pequot War set the precedent of conquest and repression that white settlers would use against Native Americans for years to come; similar justifications would later sanction enslavement.

“From the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta, and eventually to the Pacific Ocean and beyond, all Native American people—as individuals, as families, as nations—confronted waves of immigrants who sought to divest them of land rights and eradicate their cultural heritage.”

The straightforward reality of what took place between Native Americans and white settlers in America ironically underscores that much contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric was far more applicable to the incoming Europeans.

“Shays’ Rebellion exposed the fragility of the new American democracy, but it also highlighted its possibilities. It provided other struggling ‘common people’ with the confidence to act on their own grievances, and to do it outside the established channels.”

Giving citizens the freedom to criticize their government and seek reforms through aggressive political action made the new American democracy fragile. However, Shays’ Rebellion also highlighted the possibilities of the new American democracy—protesting voices were heard and impactful reforms did take place.

“In the years since his death, Shays has become a symbol of protest—of an enduring American faith in individual rights and local democracy. He exposed the tension at the heart of the new American experiment in democracy.”

The tension Gillon describes lies is the fact that the nation was founded upon principles of liberty rather than power. The US protects the individual rights of protest, while also guaranteeing law and order—two opposing goals that are sometimes in conflict with one another.

“The gold rush helped colonize the country’s open land, fulfilling the dreams of those who believed that America’s manifest destiny was to create a nation that extended from coast to coast.”

Manifest destiny is the common 19th century belief that European settlers were entitled to expand westward across the North American continent and use the land for their purposes. The gold rush realized this belief, bringing settlers to the west that otherwise would have stayed put. The gold rush also helped to tie the West Coast together with the rest of the country because of the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

“The search for gold, with its unpredictable mix of risk and reward, was better suited to the emerging entrepreneurial culture than the older faith in thrift and sweat. The Puritan work ethic and the ideals of the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, where success came in steady and modest doses, gave way to the expectations of quick riches, because the gold rush made immediate and vast wealth accessible and rewarded risk.”

The Puritan work ethic stressed that the only way to achieve success was through years of hard work. The gold rush upended this moral imperative, suggesting that success and wealth could come in an instant just through good luck. The reward of possibly finding riches through mining for gold came with tremendous risks, however: Gold seekers left their homes and jobs to head for the hills of California, often endured a treacherous journey to get there, and faced treacherous conditions on mining sites.

“The contradiction between liberty and slavery built into the foundation of the republic had torn an irreparable breach in the American experiment.”

The North and South used similar ideas to justify themselves before the Civil War. Both “believed they were the true heirs of the American Revolution” (88): While Southerners often justified their support of slavery by speaking about individual freedom and liberty, Lincoln used the same language to explain his opposition to slavery.

“The Civil War was America’s defining moment. Since the days of Daniel Shays, Americans had worried whether the republic was strong enough to hold together. The Union victory in the Civil War ended any doubts.”

Shays’ Rebellion introduced an element of fear into the democratic experiment because it showed that a government that allows dissent faces the possibility of organized violence against that government. The Civil War took those concerns even further when Confederate states seceded from the Union. When the North prevailed, the United States suddenly began to be seen as a nation rather than an alliance of states.

“Before the Civil War the United States was an overwhelmingly agricultural nation. About 60 percent of all workers toiled on a farm; only 30 percent were involved in nonagricultural pursuits. By the end of the century, those numbers had reversed.”

The United States transformed from an agricultural nation to an industrialized one largely because of the technological advances that took place during the second industrial revolution in the late 19th century. This transformation witnessed the huge growth of urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest. As manufacturing moved from small shops to large factories, larger groups of workers united into organized labor, a powerful collective voice.

“The Homestead battle resolved, at least in the workplace setting, the tension in American democracy between individual rights and public good. Workers believed that it was the responsibility of the government to protect community standards and quality of life. Management believed that government should enforce the property rights of business leaders like Andrew Carnegie.”

The Homestead strike and its resulting violence represented a change in government policy. Previously, the state and federal government largely stayed out of labor-management disputes, but the governor’s intervention now showed that government would intervene of the side of big business.

“Tocqueville had noted that democracy succeeded in America because most people were able to balance competitive individualism with their concern for their local community. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the forces of urbanization and industrialization threatened that balance.”

French writer Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America in the 1830s to observe how democracy worked, resulting in his book Democracy in America. Tocqueville argued that community involvement was just as important to Americans as self-interest. Gillon makes the case that around the turn of the 20th century these priorities shifted: The forces of industrialization and urbanization lessened community involvement.

“Overnight, McKinley’s death transformed the nation by elevating Roosevelt to the presidency. America was at a critical time in its history. Roosevelt conceived the president as ‘a steward of the people’ and argued that he had the right to use any power not specifically forbidden by law or the constitution.”

Although McKinley and Roosevelt were running mates, their political philosophies differed greatly. Whereas McKinley was considered very conservative and friendly to corporations and big business, Roosevelt was openly hostile to corporate consolidation and frequently sided with labor over management. The nation was transformed drastically by Roosevelt’s elevation to president because he ushered in an era of big government and was willing to use government power to help citizens.

“Nearly a century after his death, Theodore Roosevelt remains one of the most popular and influential American presidents. A Republican, he has now risen above partisanship to be embraced by the leaders of both parties. Republicans invoke his assertive internationalism; Democrats cite his willingness to use federal power to promote the public good.”

Several recent American presidents of both parties have cited Roosevelt as an inspiration for their own political philosophies. Contemporary Republicans applaud Roosevelt’s assertive internationalism, such as taking control of the Panama Canal, while Democrats praise his strong centralized government programs, such as his expanded national forest conservation.

“This infamous ‘monkey trial’ represents a turning point in American history not for what it resolved, but for what it revealed: a deep cultural fault line in society between doubter and devout, between elite opinion and common belief, and between city and country. Instead of being the decisive victory depicted in Inherit the Wind, the Scopes trial represented only the first skirmish in an ongoing culture war that would shape American politics and culture for the rest of the century and beyond.”

Gillon notes that 1955 stage play and 1960 film adaptation Inherit the Wind, which depict the Scopes trial, used artistic liberty to add drama to how the Darrow-led defense won the day with reasoned and logical arguments. Gillon argues that although the raging culture war of contemporary politics may seem new, the Scopes trial is likely where it began.

“Unlike most turning points in history, the Scopes trial is important for the questions it raised, not for the answers it provided. It exposed the ongoing fault line in American democracy between majority rule and minority rights, at the same time it opened a new cultural chasm between rural piety and urban cynicism.”

Gillon makes the case that contemporary American politics and political discourse has become a stalemate because both sides are dug into their positions based on an “us versus them” mentality. This has come about primarily because of the rural versus urban cultural chasm.

“Surely scientists would have eventually cracked the secrets of the atom bomb if Einstein had never written his famous letter to FDR. But it was the combination of Szilard’s persistence and Einstein’s fame that focused Roosevelt’s attention, and the crisis atmosphere of World War II that allowed the government to marshal unprecedented resources behind the Manhattan Project.”

When Szilard decided that world leaders needed to be warned about the possibilities of the Nazis building an atomic weapon, he sought out Einstein, his former teacher, to write the letter because of Einstein’s fame and political connections. Even with Einstein’s fame, getting the letter into FDR’s hands was difficult, but Szilard’s persistence paid off. While FDR took the threat seriously, his commitment to building the bomb did not take off completely until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s formal entry into World War II.

“Although many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project regretted their roles in promoting the arms race, the public hailed them as heroes. Their invention fused science and government in ways unthinkable a few years earlier, turning research scientists into popular icons.”

Both Szilard and Einstein later regretted their roles in the development of the atomic bomb—Einstein even referred to his letter to FDR as the one great mistake of his life. While their concern about Hitler developing nuclear weaponry was certainly justified, they regretted contributing to the ensuing nuclear arms race. Many of the other scientists involved in the Manhattan Project felt the same way, but at the time they were seen as heroes. Their work ushered in a new era of “Big Science,” which Gillon describes as the “unprecedented fusing of scientific knowledge, government power, and private money (197-98).

“For the guardians of public morality, Elvis was even more threatening and dangerous because his challenge was so covert. He did not smoke or drink, he was both religious and patriotic, and always respectful to his parents. He was always ‘yes-ma’aming’ and ‘no-siring’ everybody. Elvis was a polite revolutionary whose coupling of Southern gentility with rebellious music forged a safe middle ground between hedonism and holiness.”

Elvis Presley was controversial in the 1950s because his music and stage presence drew on the performances of Black artists and because older generations associated his aesthetic with juvenile delinquency. In reality, however, he was simply an extension of typical teenage self-expression of the time.

“Elvis obscured the old distinctions between high and low culture and instead created a new democratic culture—much to the dismay of established authorities.”

Popular musicians in the 1940s were clean cut and reserved in the mold of Frank Sinatra, but Elvis gave voice to the new teenage culture in the way that he dressed and sang. Because his music borrowed heavily from Black music, African American artists began being accepted by white audiences for the first time, even though segregation was still firmly established.

“While the search for the bodies and killers would unite the nation in support of greater civil rights protections, it increased racial tension within the southern civil rights movement and marked the beginning of the end of the integrated effort to end Jim Crow.”

Robert Moses, the SNCC organizer of the Freedom Summer campaign, decided to include white volunteers from the North because violence directed toward them would gain national attention. This strategy tragically worked, angering many Black activists in the civil rights movement because the government had failed to seek justice for similar attacks when the victims were Black. The SNCC murders did have the effect of uniting the nation toward stronger action regarding racial violence in the deep South.

“In many ways, Freedom Summer marks the dividing line between the hope and idealism of the early 1960s and the discord and dissent that followed. Freedom Summer can be seen as a breeding ground for the social turmoil that would consume the nation for the rest of the decade.”

Although the Civil Rights Movement technically began in the mid-1950s when Rosa Parks challenged Alabama’s segregation laws, it began more in earnest in 1960 when spontaneous sit-ins by Black activists took place across the South. Those early challenges to segregation at stores and lunch counters were marked by hope and idealism. However, protests in the late 1960s became more aggressive and brought about more discord. Gillon argues that the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were the dividing line between these two different eras of protest.

“Highlighting the brutality of southern racism, the murders set the stage for America’s ‘Second Reconstruction.’ Southern whites had always used violence to suppress their black population, but now television cameras projected into the homes of millions of Americans disturbing images of police dogs mauling elderly black women and fire hoses knocking innocent children to the ground.”

The original Reconstruction took place just after the Civil War and was intended to assure the civil rights of African Americans in the South after slavery was abolished. However, Jim Crow laws and legalized segregation overturned any progress. During the “Second Reconstruction,” a period from the late 1940s until the late 1960s, the nation made some attempts to correct these ongoing civil rights abuses.

“In one way or another, each of the days chronicled in this book and in the series on The History Channel underscores our nation’s ongoing struggle to live up to the ideals of the American creed—that abstract constellation of shared beliefs in individual rights, equality, and democracy.”

American ideals—liberty, equality, and democracy—are stated clearly in the Constitution as notions that the nation stands for, but living up to these ideals has been a struggle. Each of the events chronicled in the book has come about when attempts to reach these ideals have fallen short.