by Jill Lepore
237
President Tyler officiates at a wedding between the Texas star and America in a political cartoon from a New Orleans newspaper in 1844—the year Tyler himself married. Andrew Jackson Houston Papers #3445, Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
245
Zachary Taylor tries to balance the congressional scales between the “Wilmot Proviso” and “Southern Rights.” Library of Congress.
246
Americans who objected to the extension of slavery often pictured Texans (and Mexicans) as mixed-race and brutal. In this political cartoon, “young Texas,” whose tattoos read “Murder,” “Slavery,” and “Rape,” sits on a whipped and manacled slave. E. Jones / The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.
248
Frederick Douglass, the most photographed man in antebellum America, believed photography to be a democratic art. The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USAMajor Acquisitions Centennial Endowment / Bridgeman Images.
253
The leading 1848 presidential candidates race to the White House by telegraph (Lewis Cass) and railroad (Zachary Taylor); Henry Clay tries to gain on them in a rowboat; laggard Martin Van Buren follows on a skinny horse; and a black man, representing abolition, lies facedown in the dirt, defeated. Edwin Forrest Durang / Libary of Congress.
272
Photographs like the Alexander Gardner’s portraits of the dead at Antietam chronicled the war and its many devastations. Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress.
280
African American photographer Augustus Washington captured this likeness of John Brown in his daguerreotype studio in Connecticut in 1846 or 1847. Brown, his right hand raised as if taking an oath, stands in front of the flag of the Subterranean Pass-Way, his more militant version of the Underground Railroad. Augustus Washington.
286
Mathew Brady’s 1860 daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, cropped, was reproduced as a campaign button. Mathew B. Brady / Library of Congress.
289
Broadsides printed early in 1861 notified citizens of the seceding states that their legislatures had dissolved the Union by repealing their ratification of the 1787 Constitution. Library of Congress.
294
Alexander Gardner, another kind of sharpshooter, took this photograph of a dead Confederate sharpshooter at Gettysburg. Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress.
298
On Emancipation Day, January 1, 1863, black men, women, and children celebrated outside Beaufort, South Carolina. Timothy H. O’Sullivan.
302
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a Northern paper, in 1863 ran this before-and-after illustration of Southern women first urging their men to rebellion and later staging bread riots. Library of Congress.
306
Mourners lined New York’s Union Square in 1865 as Lincoln’s funeral procession passed by while, perched on a rooftop, a photographer captured a bird’s-eye shot of the scene. Library of Congress.
308
The growing power of the federal government was extravagantly displayed at increasingly lavish presidential inaugurations. Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images.
311
Residents of Richmond, Virginia, celebrated the anniversary of Emancipation Day in 1888, beneath a banner of Abraham Lincoln. Cook Collection, Valentine Museum #1388.
316
Lew Wa Ho worked at a dry goods shop in St. Louis; the photograph was included in his Immigration Service case file as evidence of employment. National Archives, Pacific Region (Seattle) Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
319
A pamphlet published in 1916 celebrated “the noble ride of the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction Period” and insisted on its “rightful place in history as the saviour of the South, and, thereby, the saviour of the nation.” Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture # 2011.155.15.
325
In an 1886 cartoon, Uncle Sam kicks Chinese immigrants out of the United States, demonstrating the intensity of anti-Chinese feeling in the first decade of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Shober & Carqueville / Library of Congress.
331
A family unable to pay the mortgage on a farm in western Kansas headed back east to Illinois, having chronicled the journey on the canvas of their wagon: “left Nov. 20, 1894; arrived Dec. 26, 1894.” Kansas Historical Society.
351
Judge magazine in 1896 pictured William Jennings Bryan bearing his cross of gold, wielding a crown of thorns, and standing on an open Bible while a follower, behind him, waves a flag that reads “Anarchy.” Grant E. Hamilton / Library of Congress.
357
Ida B. Wells’s indictment of lynching was first published in 1892. Udo J. Keppler / Library of Congress.
361
The 120-acre Ford Motor plant in Highland Park, Michigan, opened in 1910, the largest manufacturing site in the world. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.
367
In 1898, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both used the war to increase circulation. Leon Barritt / Library of Congress.
370
Charles Mitchell was lynched in Urbana, Ohio, in 1897, one of thousands of black men lynched during the Jim Crow era. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 2.2002.3604; photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
372
In a 1910 magazine cover, top-hatted banker J. Pierpont Morgan grabs at all of New York City’s banks—even a toddler’s piggy bank. Frank A. Nanki vell / Library of Congress.
374
A 1900 cartoon depicts Theodore Roosevelt as a centaur, branded “GOP,” bucking wildly while firing two guns, one labeled “Speeches,” the other, “Wild Talk.” Udo J. Keppler / Library of Congress.
385
Photographer Jesse Tarbox Beals took this shot of a suffrage parade in New York in 1910. Jessie Tarbox Beals / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
408
A 1921 cartoon depicts Uncle Sam deploying a funnel to stanch the flow of immigrants from Europe. Library of Congress.
415
Shall Christianity Remain Christian?, a pamphlet published in 1922, pictured a journey from doubt to atheism as an inevitable descent. Ernest James Pace / Courtesy of Presbyterian Historical Society.
421
A family in Hood River, Oregon, gathers around the radio in 1925. National Archives.
425
Dorothea Lange photographed farmers on relief in California’s Imperial Valley in 1936. Dorothea Lange, Courtesy Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Sedge-wick Memorial Collection.
429
Franklin Delano Roosevelt bypassed the press and spoke to the people directly by radio. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing.
432
Eleanor Roosevelt created an entirely new role for the First Lady, not least by spending time touring the country. In May 1935, she toured a coal mine in Bellaire, Ohio. AP Photo.
439
Sharecroppers were evicted from their homes in 1936 in Arkansas after joining a tenant farmers’ union. John Vachon / Library of Congress.
453
Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s minister of propaganda, made especially effective use of radio, here used to address Hitler Youth. Hulton-Deutsch / Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis / Getty Images.
468
Newspapers around the country reported a panic during the 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds. NY Daily News Archive / Getty Images.
472
The day after the United States bombed Hiroshima, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran, as an editorial, a crayon drawing titled A New Era in Man’s Understanding of Nature’s Forces. Daniel Robert Fitzpatrick / Courtesy State Historical Society of Miss
ouri.
485
A 1943 Office of War Information poster celebrated the combined strength of the Allied forces. US Army, Signal Corps / Courtesy Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
486
Wartime mobilization called on women to join the military, as in this U.S. Navy recruiting poster from 1942. Henry Koerner / Library of Congress. 493 Soldiers communicated from the trenches by way of radio, here in the Philippine island of Leyte in 1944. John Philip Falter / Library of Congress.
495
Dorothea Lange photographed the forced relocation of Japanese Americans in California in 1942. Dorothea Lange / National Archives.
500
A billboard in Detroit in 1942 called for the continuation of segregated housing. Office of War Information, Arthur Siegel, Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Library.
509
FDR and Winston Churchill conferred on a warship at the outset of the Yalta Conference in 1945. Courtesy the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum.
513
In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other U.S. generals stopped at a newly liberated concentration camp at Ohrdruf, where the remains of burned bodies were found on railroad tracks. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.
518
John Mauchly’s ENIAC, sometimes called the Giant Brain, marked the beginning of the age of information. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images.
521
In an era of American abundance, TV sets in a store window broadcast Eisenhower’s announcement of his decision to run for reelection in 1956. Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
524
Vassar mathematician Grace Murray Hopper programmed Mark I. Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
528
The G.I. Bill made it possible for a generation of Americans to attend college. In September 1947, three jubilant former servicemen leave a student union at Indiana University, waving their notices of admission. Indiana University Photographic Services Neg # 47-1082 (PRC has B/W).
533
Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, who founded Campaigns, Inc., in California in 1933, attained national prominence at the end of the 1940s through their successful defeat of Truman’s health insurance plan. George Skadding / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
556
Suburban housewives served as the foot soldiers of the conservative movement; here, women rally in support of Joseph McCarthy. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images.
564
CBS News, whose team included Walter Cronkite, commissioned the first commercial computer, UNIVAC, to predict the outcome of the election of 1952. Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images.
567
U.S. Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch holds his head in his hand as Joseph McCarthy speaks during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Robert Phillips / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images.
569
Reverend Billy Graham, here preaching in Washington, DC, in 1952, reached a nationwide audience but boasted an especially strong following in Congress. Mark Kauffman / The LIFE Premium Collection / Getty Images.
585
Elizabeth Eckford was turned away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, by order of the state’s governor, Orval Faubus. Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
587
On the cover of Life, MIT scientists attempt to calculate the orbit of the Soviet satellite Sputnik while the magazine promises to explain “Why Reds Got It First.” Dmitri Kessel / Life magazine, Copyright Time Inc. / The LIFE Premium Collection / Getty Images.
589
Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev debated the merits of capitalism and communism in a model American kitchen on display in Moscow, 1959. Photo by Howard Sochurek / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images #50475727.
595
Students from North Carolina A&T College staged a sit-in at a lunch counter in a Woolworth’s in Greensboro. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
601
The joint appearance between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 was the first televised presidential “debate”; another matchup would not take place until 1976. CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images.
612
Johnson, here touching down in the presidential helicopter in rural Appalachia, made a Poverty Tour in 1964 to see what Dwight Macdonald called “our invisible poor.” Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
618
Johnson applied “The Treatment” to Abe Fortas in July 1965, the month before Fortas took a seat on the Supreme Court. Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto.
620
Americans watched the war in Vietnam from their living rooms. Library of Congress.
631
Young men in Central Park, New York, mourned Martin Luther King Jr. following his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Benedict Fernandez, Courtesy Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Beinecke Fund.
634
Poet and boxer Rodolfo Gonzales, a leader of the Chicano movement, spoke at a rally in Denver in 1970. Dave Buresh / The Denver Post / Getty Images.
645
Nixon left the White House by helicopter on August 9, 1974. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
646
Phyllis Schlafly led a resurgent conservative movement in the 1970s by making opposition to equal rights one of its signature issues. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
655
Betty Ford, who attended the National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977, was among several powerful Republicans who objected to using women to draw a line between the political parties. Bettye Lane / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
669
Ronald Reagan, a man of immense personal charm, greeted supporters in Indiana during his 1980 campaign. Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo.
676
The lines between the parties hardened over guns and abortion, one meaning freedom and the other murder, though which meant which depended on the party. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library.
687
ACT UP demonstrators protested outside New York’s city hall in 1988. Bettye Lane / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
690
No single act so well captured the end of the Cold War as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Luis Veiga / Getty Images.
693
Bill and Hillary Clinton frequently appeared together on the campaign trail in 1992. Cynthia Johnson / Liason / Getty Images.
717
A battle over a recount in the election of 2000 left the outcome in doubt for weeks. LeFranc / Gamma-Rapho / Getty Image.
719
Firefighters searched Ground Zero long after the collapse of both towers. Photo by James Nachtwey ’70 The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth.
730
Wired magazine began appearing in 1993 and by 2000 announced that the Internet had ushered in “One Nation, Interconnected.” Wired © Condé Nast.
741
The Iraq War mired U.S. soldiers in counterinsurgency campaigns. Matt Cardy / Getty Images.
751
Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 drew the largest crowd ever assembled on the Mall. Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images.
756
Tax Day protests held on April 15, 2009, marked the birth of the Tea Party movement, which countered Obama’s call for change with a call for a return to the principles of the founding fathers. Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty Images.
773
Not long after his 2017 inauguration, President Trump greeted visitors to the White House in front of a portrait of Hillary Clinton. Aude Guerrucci-Pool / Getty Images.
78
4
Glenn Ligon’s 2012 Double America, in neon and paint, was partly inspired by the opening words of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” © Glenn Ligon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
ABC list, 494
Abenakis, 57
abolitionists, 205, 252
constitutional convention damned by, 241
evolution and, 284
founders judged by, 201
Texas annexation opposed by, 238, 241–42
women as, 207, 228
abortion:
anti-abortion terrorism, 702
and anti-feminist women’s movement, 652–53
Betty Ford on, 654, 655
and evangelical churches, 664
history of, 649–50
and National Women’s Conference, 661, 662
and 1960s political consensus, 647, 649
and Nixon, 653–54, 658
and political polarization, 647, 658, 667–68, 676