Category Archives: U.S. History

Chicago, Yesterday and Today

Image title: “Chicago Day at the Exposition,” 1893

Today, if you were to visit the site where, on October 9, 1893, more than 751,000 people visited the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, you would find a tranquil city park with a massive museum at its north end.

The crowd amassed on Chicago Day included more people than had ever gathered for any peace-time event in the known history of the world. According to Erik Larson, “the [Chicago] Tribune argued that the only greater gathering was the massing of Xerxes’ army of over five million souls in the fifth century B.C.”

They had come to see the White City, a city built in south Chicago’s Jackson Park and built specifically for the Columbian Exposition. The buildings were temporary structures, but their neo-classical design, the boulevards that ran between them, the dredged and re-configured Jackson Park, and the civic spirit that made it possible to build the Exposition in less than three years all left their permanent mark on the city of Chicago.

In January 2012, I visited Chicago to attend the American Historical Association’s annual meeting. I finished reading Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City just days before my trip, so while I was in the Windy City I visited Jackson Park. The Palace of Fine Arts (reinforced with stone in the late 1920s and now Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry) is all that remains of the White City. The Japanese Garden on Wooded Island stands as the only visible trace of landscaping. Frederick Law Olmsted’s radical designs grew as he intended: so that future visitors would not be able to detect the changes he made. The rest of Jackson Park appears as though it has always looked as it does now.

So the image “Chicago Day at the Exposition” is important because it shows just how radically Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and others changed the face of Jackson Park and Chicago. Without photographs from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, it is difficult to imagine the scale of the spectacle. It is difficult to get a sense of the majesty of the event at which Juicy Fruit, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Cracker Jack, Shredded Wheat, Aunt Jemima’s pancakes, and the Ferris wheel all made their debut.

Further Reading:
1. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (New York: B. W. Dodge, 1907).
2. Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, 1st ed. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003).
3. Carl Smith, “Where All the Trains Ran: Chicago,” Common-Place 3, no. 4 (July 2003), http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-04/chicago/.

Students Ponder Propaganda's Purpose

Title: “Destroy This Mad Brute…ENLIST if you want to fight for your country…” 1917

About the image: Poster, “Destroy This Mad Brute…ENLIST if you want to fight for your country…If this war is not fought to a finish in Europe, it will be on the soil of the United States,” 1917. Ad, U.S. Army, World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm II has been turned into a huge, black, insane ape wearing a German spiked helmet labeled “Militarism,” abducting a terrified Columbia for rape, bringing down a bloodied club labeled “KULTUR” on “AMERICA,” and threatening the next victim, the viewer. Blood drenches his hands and wrists. This slobbering beast personifies several other stereotypes, racial ones included. H.R. Hopps poster.

Here’s what Winters High School teacher Courtney Caruso’s 11th- grade students had to say about this image:

Student 1: “This was a poster used in WW1 to encourage people to enlist in the military. It was one of many propaganda forms used at the time. The gorilla-beast represents the enemies, the Central Powers, and the woman represents the innocence being captured by this evil power. It was supposed to invoke a feeling of sympathy towards the innocent women, children, and other civilians, leading to the idea that America was going to protect them.”

Student 2: “This image has to do with WW1. The “brute” in the poster refers to a combination of several countries known as the Central Powers with Germany as a focus. These countries are portrayed as having “captured” liberty, represented by the woman in the poster. Lady Liberty, representing America, is given a beautiful human form, while the Central Powers are portrayed by a slavering wild beast. It is supposed to turn viewers away from the Central powers and garner support for the war effort on the side of the allies. The Beast is stepping on American land, which makes people shocked and afraid. They wonder if the war will come to their home country, America. This poster represents one of the unfortunate instances of war: both sides view the other as some beast that must be slain, while really, these countries are full of people. They are not monsters. The armies are made of men; they aren’t wild beasts of their own. The people dying have lives, and families, and thoughts, and wants, and needs just like everyone else. Humanity is lost during war, in part due to war propaganda like this.”

Related Topics/Themed Collections: War posters, World War I, Propaganda

Lessons in the Marchand Collection:

World War I Propaganda by Kevin Williams, CHSS 11.4.5, IN PRINT – AVAILABLE ONLY IN THE MARCHAND ROOM

Resources Available in the Marchand Collection:

Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of the First World War: A Great Conflict Recalled in Previously Unpublished Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs
Arthur S. Link, The Impact of WW1

What do your students think about this image? Click here to let us know.

Depicting “The Drunkard’s Progress”

Title: “The Drunkard’s Progress,” 1846

About the image: Step 1: A glass with a friend. Step 2: A glass to keep the cold out. Step 3: A glass too much (weaving). Step 4: Drunk and riotous (policeman with club”). Step 5: The summit attained…Jolly companions…A confirmed drunkard. Step 6: Poverty and Disease (with cane). Step 7: Forsaken by Friends. Step 8: Desperation and crime (with gun). Step 9: Death by suicide.” Early 19th century Temperance painting. Fear, laced with appeals to the conscience, was the main weapon of temperance leaders of this period and later who endeavored to make Americans forswear the bottle. The rise of social disorder, with burgeoning slums, impoverished families, increases in crime, prostitution and Sabbath-breaking, was seen by many as the result of drink. Aside from the penitentiary and its supposed influence through fear, another means of crime prevention was the temperance movement. “Drink is the cause: stop crime and poverty at their source.” Temperance tales paint the drinker as not only immoral and sinful but also unsuccessful: the drunkard loses devotion to work, his reputation for reliability, and his job.

Why does American River College faculty member, Camille Leonhardt, find this image interesting?

Images of the Drunkard’s Progress are very useful in helping students to understand the Temperance Movement of the nineteenth-century. The Temperance Movement arose within the broader context of economic and geographic transformations underway. Alcohol consumption increased dramatically during the early nineteenth-century, with distilled liquor consumption peaking in the early 1830s. The Drunkard’s Progress image serves as a useful tool for beginning to explore these trends during the era. Why were Americans drinking more distilled liquor? (Cultural changes underway and increased anxiety). Why did they have access to more distilled liquor? (Physical expansion and the ease of transporting a concentrated form of their crops, such as grains and barley).

The image also serves as a very useful tool for exploring how Americans sought to establish order within a period of cultural and economic change. The two-pronged strategy pursued by temperance societies reveals how Americans sought to establish social order by imposing legal sanctions prohibiting the sale and manufacture of liquor, in addition to encouraging individuals to take oaths of abstinence. Advocates of temperance signed pledges to abstain from liquor consumption. Temperance advocates achieved a legal victory in Maine in 1851, with passage of the first statewide prohibition statute.

Participation in the Temperance Movement proved to be very validating for women and provided many women with opportunities to develop skills and confidence needed to demand political rights of their own. Established in 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, WCTU, became one of the largest female organizations in the United States. Even before the formation of the WCTU, other temperance societies provided women with the rare opportunity to participate in meetings, plan strategies, and gain experience with leadership.

View more temperance images from before 1870 here.

Related Topics/Themed Collections: Nineteenth Century, Liquor, Temperance to 1870′s

Lessons in the Marchand Collection:

Northern Reform Communities Town Hall Meeting by Jeff Pollard, CHSS 8.6 & 8.9, IN PRINT – AVAILABLE IN THE MARCHAND ROOM

Related Resources Available in the Marchand Collection:

Susan Leighow, Rita Sterner-Hine, The Antebellum Women’s Movement, 1820 to 1860: A Unit of Study for Grades 8-11,Organization of American Historians and the Regents, University of California, 1998.

Elisabeth Griffith, In Her own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Share your ideas! How would you use this image?

Click here to let us know.

Enlisting the Citizen Consumer in World War II

Katharine Kipp, graduate student in the History department at U.C. Davis, shares her thoughts about using advertisements to teach history.

The Marchand Collection features a vast selection of advertisements from various eras. I particularly like those printed during WWII by Del Monte Foods that asked the average citizen, women in particular, to help with the war effort through their consumption habits. I find these ads appealing because they offer an engaging and useful way to discuss the WWII home front. They provide a significant amount of material for students to examine, and do not require reading all of the text in order to fully understand the meaning of the ad as a whole. These images can help enhance lessons covering a wide range of issues.

First, they provide an opportunity for teachers to talk about the role of women on the home front. Typically, classroom discussions draw upon Rosie the Riveter as the primary example of women’s participation in WWII. These ads provide an opportunity to widen the scope on women’s lives during the war. The ads “drafted” female consumers by targeting their domestic sensibilities. They were asked to “Enlist Now!” in an effort to combat the challenges of rationing. Specifically, the ads argue that “Unless You Do Your Part” the rationing system will not work. Essentially these ads help demonstrate the link between a consumer and a patriotic citizen by reminding the audience that purchasing for one’s own self-interest would undermine the war effort. Consumers had to work together with producers to see the nation through the war. Use these ads alone or coupled with war industry ads to discuss the variety of ways women were called upon to contribute to the war effort.

Secondly, teachers can use these ads to help transition to Cold War lessons. They help transition the discussion from self-interest consumption as a potential danger during WWII, to consumption as vital for national stability during the Cold War era.

Finally, I think these ads combined with others from the 1940s and beyond offer an appealing way for students to discuss advertising in general—the importance, pitfalls, and significance. I find ads are a great way to engage students in discussion as they often portray stereotypes and gender roles, provide insight to socioeconomic issues of the era, and offer a glimpse into the mindsets of both the producer and consumer.

Click here to explore more advertising images in the Marchand Archive. How do you use advertisements to teach history? Share your thoughts here.

William Jennings Bryan Beyond the Scopes Trial

William Jennings Bryan Campaign Poster

Title: “No Crown of Thorns, No Cross of Gold…”

About the image: William Jennings Bryan on a 1900 campaign poster. Symbols of the plow and the rooster; trusts as an octopus’ tentacles over industry.

Why does Davis High School Teacher, Kevin Williams, find this image interesting?

I find this image usable in several different ways in the classroom. First, it could be used as a warm up for the election of 1900. From the image, students can be lead to identify three central issues: farmers and monetary policy, American foreign policy, and the influence of trusts. The words that appear on this document also provide fodder for discussion. They are loaded and clearly show the biases of Bryan the candidate. I ask students to determine Bryan’s stance on the issues using the images and words.

Second, the image is useful as part of an investigation on campaigns. A comparison of this campaign poster and a McKinley poster shows the differences in campaigning techniques between 1900 and today. (A great McKinley poster for comparison can be found here.) You could also ask students to compare this campaign material to the political cartoons published during the election cycle of 1900. The Harp Week website “Presidential Elections 1860-1912,” is a great resource for this.

Finally, this would be a marvelous source to bring into any discussion of the Scopes Monkey Trial. William Jennings Bryan is possibly best remembered for his conservative role in the prosecution of John Scopes. I want students to know that Bryan wasn’t simply a reactionary, but was considered somewhat radical and revolutionary at other points in his life. After all, he did promote government ownership of railroads in the election of 1908. This campaign poster could create a more complete picture of a very complex and important historical man.

Related Topics/Themed Collections: National Politics, Gilded Age

Lessons in the Marchand Collection:

How Progressive Were the Progressives? by Kevin Williams, CHSS 11.2, IN PRINT – AVAILABLE IN THE MARCHAND ROOM, ONLINE – AVAILABLE FROM THE BEST OF YOLO COUNTY SYMPOSIUM

Resources Available in the Marchand Collection:

Brett Flehinger, The 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism: A Brief History with Documents, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, ed., Muckraking: Three Landmark Articles, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, ed., Who Were the Progressives?, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.
The Progressive Era: The Limits of Reform, Social Science Education Consortium, 1989.

Share your ideas! How would you use this image? Click here to let us know.

“It would have been a rare spectacle indeed to see troops patrolling Pennsylvania Avenue to protect the life of the President of the United States against a possible attack by a handful of weary, footsore, and bedraggled war veterans.”

Mauritz A. Hallgren in The Nation, July 27, 1932

The Bonus Army marching in parade in Washington, D.C., 1932

The Library of Congress’ recent blog post “Occupying” the Bonus Army Protests of 1932 got History Project staff very excited. One of the treasures left to us by the late Roland Marchand was his collection of “Documentary Source Problems” which were digitized and launched on-line as Adventures in Roland Marchand’s File Cabinet in 1999. His lesson The Bonus Army in Washington provides context and has students investigating whether the actions taken by the Veterans to occupy the mall in Washington D.C. were a “courageous defiance of lawlessness and a budding revolution” by analyzing documents from the event and considering questions such as: “Was there clear evidence that a Communist-led revolution was in the making,” “Was the Hoover administration trying to provoke a conflict by ordering the eviction of the veterans,” and “Did the clashes between police and the bonus marchers on July 28 amount to an actual riot?” We suggest that current events including the “Occupy” movement in the US as well as protests in the Middle East provide ways for students to make connections to this event from the Great Depression as well as other protest events throughout history. These protest events provide avenues to discuss how and why citizens seek redress and why this may or may not lead to change. We invite you to peruse this documentary source problem and share your thoughts about using this approach in the classroom with us. The Bonus Army lesson, which has been adapted for high school students, is also available in its original format for use with university students.

Topics & Themes Provide a Lens for Analysis

Christmas sketch for Harper's Weekly, 1902

One of the options for browsing the Marchand Archive is to use the “Topic/Theme” menu on the right side of the Image Collection page. Most of the “Topic/Themes” were identified by the historians who contributed to our collection, in particular, Roland Marchand. The title of the topic or theme and the selection of the images filtered by historian can provide some insight into how they used them when teaching. In today’s post, we invite you to check out three images of Uncle Sam at Christmas simultaneously organized under the topics “Symbols, U.S. Nationalism,” and “Industrialization.” Considering the three images representing 1802, 1852, and 1902, provides some food for thought on how Americans were thinking about themselves and what they considered to be their nation’s achievements over course of the Nineteenth Century.

Uncle Sam celebrates Christmas, 1802, with a toy carriage and agricultural products in a stocking

Uncle Sam in 1852 with gold from California, a small train and telegraph pole.

How would you guide students’ analysis of this series of images in your classroom? Share your thoughts here.

What does it mean to "Keep within compass?"

Keep within Compass

Title: “Keep within compass,” 1785-1805

About the image: Contemporary English print advising women to “Keep within compass.”

Suggestions for Using this Image in the Classroom:

This image could spur a class discussion about how society viewed women at the turn of the eighteenth century. After having students engage in a close observation of it lead the class in a discussion of the following:

What do you see outside of the circle? What stands out to you?
What is a compass, what is it used for, and what does it mean to “Keep within Compass?”
What does this image suggest about societal expectations of women in the late 1700s and early 1800s?
Expand the discussion by looking at similar images that include men found here or by finding other examples of the use of the proverb “Keep within compass.”
Compare the image with ones from later time periods and discuss what has changed in the way society defines the roles of it’s members.
Ask students to create a drawing interpreting their modern day compass.

For more on women’s roles in society during the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century see the resources in the National Humanities Center Toolbox Library .

Related Topics/Themed Collections: Eighteenth Century, Women in the Revolution

Related Lessons in the Marchand Collection:

Women Outside the Compass 1880-1922 by Sarah Scheeline, ONLINE – AVAILABLE ON THE HISTORY PROJECT WEBSITE
The Lowell Mills & the Women Who Worked There by Pamela Tindall, IN PRINT – AVAILABLE ONLY IN THE MARCHAND LIBRARY
Northern Reform Communities’ Town Hall Meeting by Jeff Pollard, IN PRINT – AVAILABLE ONLY IN THE MARCHAND LIBRARY

Related Resources Available in the Marchand Collection:

Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience
Miriam Gurko, The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement

Share your ideas! How would you use this image? Let us know here.

Deconstructing "The Mystery of 1920"

A well-dressed young woman enters “Voting Booth No. 1.”

Title: “The Mystery of 1920,” Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, cover, September 11, 1920.

About the image: A well-dressed young woman enters “Voting Booth No. 1.”

Why does Natomas Charter School Teacher Jeff Pollard find this image interesting?

“I use this image as part of my introduction to a primary source investigation about the New Woman of the 1920s using Marchand Archive resources. I think it is a fantastic image because it gets students’ attention, and the increased status for women in the 1920s is so clear. The image itself does a lot of work for me as a teacher by setting up my investigation. The title of the image is “The Mystery of 1920.” So I ask students, “What is the mystery?” Students clearly can see that this New Woman was confident, stylish, and even a bit egotistical in her glance. Through analyzing the image students come to the conclusion that the mystery of 1920 is the question: How will America be changed as women step into voting and toward political equality? It is a great example of how images can be used to set up investigations, get students’ attention, and link a concept to an image. I come back to this image later in the year when I review for the the standardized test required by California. I show this image again and ask students the following questions: What was the mystery? Why 1920? What amendment granted women suffrage? The students remember the image and remember the content associated with it as well.”

Related Topics/Themed Collections: Twenties, 20’s pop culture, women