There was an period in American history known as The Era of Good Feelings, 1812 to 1825. In fact the 1820 United States presidential election had only a single candidate nominated by a party. Afterwards the manifest destiny pulled America westward and tore the north and south apart not on the ultimate issue of slavery itself but on limiting slavery in the new areas to enable "the poor white man to flourish" or to continue the plantation model and slavery in the new areas. The Whigs were increasingly irrelevant once they opposed Manifest Destiny in order to build up coastal cities.
The civil war ended both States Rights to own slaves and States Rights to oppose the Federal Government. For good or for ill, anyone wanting their state to be largely organized differently than the rest was fucked. There could be cultural differences but unless the Federal Government was content with it then there were no political solutions for you.
The Reconstruction era where America began its schizophrenia on race, either the difference was between Good multiculturalists and Bad Racists or between Good hard-working people who couldn't stand living on the government's dime and Bad Lazy folks who thought diligence was a sly form of cheating. The vast majority of people were busy coping with the death and devastation the war had brought and flip-flopped between the two moral frameworks depending on the issue.
The Gilded Age where American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. This was when the Anglo-Saxon Protestant began to genetically become replaced by the non-Anglo, white or otherwise. With the rapid growth of cities, political machines increasingly took control of urban politics. In business, powerful nationwide trusts formed in some industries. Unions crusaded unsuccessfully for the eight-hour working day, and the abolition of child labor; middle class reformers demanded civil service reform, prohibition of liquor and beer, and women's suffrage. Local governments across the North and West built public schools chiefly at the elementary level; public high schools started to emerge. The numerous religious denominations were growing in membership and wealth, with Catholicism becoming the largest.
The old America recognizable by Thomas Jefferson was fully dead at least in the east.
The Progressive Era (1896–1916) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States of America. Magazines experienced a boost in popularity in 1900, with some attaining circulations in the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In the beginning of the age of Mass media, the rapid expansion of national advertising led the cover price of popular magazines to fall sharply to about 10 cents, lessening the financial barrier to consume them allowing the prominent coverage by journalists and writers, who became known as muckrakers, who often took on corporate monopolies and political machines while raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and social issues like child labor. During the progressive era more women took work outside the home. For the working class this work was often as a domestic servant. Because of this, numerous advancements in home appliances, gas, indoor plumbing, electricity and garbage pickup were popular and allowed for use of space once used for storage to become living spaces. This is the era when Women became the targets by advertisements for many different products once produced at home. Because of this new social enfranchisement and time saving, middle-class women organized on behalf of social reforms during the Progressive Era. Using the language of municipal housekeeping women were able to push such reforms as prohibition, women's suffrage, child-saving, and public health. Dating in relationships became a new way of courting during the Progressive Era and moved the United States into a more romantic way of viewing marriage and relationships. A lesser-known feminist movement in the progressive era was the self-defense movement. Wilma Berger, an aspiring nurse at the Henrotin hospital in Chicago, was struck by a male attacker during a nighttime stroll. Berger, then 20 years old, fought off her attacker and sparked a nationwide movement advocating for women to take self-defense courses. As more women across the country began taking these self defense courses the mentality that women were physically inferior and needed protecting was slowly being broken down and turned into a new more empowering narrative. Sociological experts in the Progressive era argued that women who actively resist, fight back, or flee the attacker are more likely to deter an attacker as opposed to theories from other leading experts such as Frederic Storaska, that advised women "to submit to rape to prevent further harm."
I'm just going to say it, I think women ruined America, politically they changed the look of most Presidents, and see their vote more as a emotional or ethical act rather than a tactical or logical act, and broke the family one generation at a time. Repeal the 19th.
Interwar America can best be summarized by this:
followed by this:
Post war America saw a beginning to America's need to remake countries it went to war with and an end to Congress having the ability to control America's military adventures, a total devaluation of the American Dollar by making it completely by fiat, Kennedy's Assassination, a total collapse of America's ability to run a conscription-based Army, Watergate, Ronald Reagan appeared on TV stating there was no "arms for hostages" deal but was later forced to admit on TV that there had been. Overall Watergate had broke the people's respect of the president and it did give the media more credibility and power than the oval office. I'm not sure that was a larger demotivater than Vietnam's draft which was the government sending you to fight or die in a war nobody knew could be won by the end. Certainly TV made the media more powerful than Watergate since they could deliver in picture and sound a nightly point-of-view where magazines and newspapers before could only hope the average American could read.
