Unit 7: Period 7 (1890–1945)

Executive Summary

Period 7 spans America's rise to world power: progressivism, imperialism, two world wars, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression and New Deal.

Progressivism and empire

Progressives fought corruption, monopolies, and social ills through muckraking journalism, settlement work, and reform. Presidents Roosevelt (trust-busting, conservation), Taft, and Wilson (Federal Reserve, Clayton Act) expanded federal power. Constitutional amendments brought income tax (16th), direct Senate elections (17th), Prohibition (18th), and women's suffrage (19th).

Imperialism

The Spanish-American War (1898) brought Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines under American sway — an empire justified by the 'white man's burden' rhetoric and opposed by the Anti-Imperialist League. The Roosevelt Corollary extended the Monroe Doctrine into intervention.

World War I and the twenties

Wilson kept the US neutral until 1917, then mobilized for 'making the world safe for democracy.' The Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations failed in the Senate. The twenties roared: consumer culture, radio, jazz, Harlem Renaissance — alongside nativism, the Red Scare, and immigration restriction (1924).

Depression and New Deal

The 1929 crash exposed economic fragility; Hoover's response was limited. FDR's New Deal (relief, recovery, reform) created the CCC, WPA, Social Security, and the FDIC. The court-packing fight and the 'Roosevelt recession' marked its limits. The Dust Bowl drove Okies west.

World War II

Isolationism yielded after Pearl Harbor (1941). The US fought on two fronts, mobilized industry, interned Japanese Americans, and ended the war with atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945).

Exam traps

Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment — the only amendment repeal. The New Deal did NOT end the Depression; WWII spending did. Japanese internment was upheld by Korematsu, later repudiated. The 1920s were not prosperity for all — farmers and Black Americans struggled.