Hawaiian Annexation |
William H. Taft |
By the time the United States got serious about looking beyond its own borders to conquer new lands, much of the world had already been claimed. Only a few distant territories in Africa and Asia and remote islands in the Pacific remained free from imperial grasp. Hawaii was one such plum. Led by a hereditary monarch, the inhabitants of the kingdom prevailed as an independent state. American expansionists looked with greed on the strategically located islands and waited patiently to plan their move.
|
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of
the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States. He is
the only person to have served in both of the offices. Before becoming
president, Taft, a Republican, was appointed to serve on the Superior Court of
Cincinnati in 1887. In 1890, Taft was appointed Solicitor General of the United
States and in 1891 a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit. In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft Governor-General of
the Philippines.
|
America- The World PowerFrom a foreign perspective, the United States was too powerful to ignore but too unpredictable to deal with satisfactorily. From the American viewpoint, global interests and capabilities made for uneasiness and confusion. The new circumstances of American foreign affairs seemed to require reevaluation of traditional American policies and portended new military necessities. Americans found themselves caught up in new difficulties rather suddenly; they had not fully appreciated the problems that policies and developments of the last decades of the nineteenth century had brought. They had traded as they always had, vigorously and aggressively. They had expanded their boundaries, sought naval strength (beginning in the 1880s), and acquired a position unchallengeable in the hemisphere—but they had not anticipated the effects of such changes on their position beyond the hemisphere. They had hoped to exert a considerable influence on the nations of the world, but by example rather than by forcible instruction. American strength was meant to make the nation impervious to the caprice or malice of European governments and to enable it to vindicate rights and protect interests, but not to require U.S. participation in European political affairs
|
General John J. PershingJohn J. Pershing was the general in the United States Army who led the American Expeditionary Forces to victory over Germany in World War I, 1917-18. He reject British and French demands that American forces be integrated with their armies, and insisted that the AEF would operate as a single unit under his command, although some American divisions fought under British command, and he also allowed all-black units to be integrated with the French army.
|
America Mobilizes & New Kind of War |
Archduke Franz Ferdinand |
To meet the government's need for more fighting power, Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May 9, 1917. The act required men to register with the government in order to be randomly selected for military service. By the end of 1918, 24 million men had registered under the act. Of this number, almost 3 million were called up. About 2 million troops reached Europe before the truce was signed, and three-fourths of them saw actual combat.
|
Franz Ferdinand was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia, and from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. This caused the Central powers and Serbia's allies to declare war on each other, starting World War I.
|
Women During the War |
Woodrow Wilson |
In the years before the Civil War, the lives of American women were shaped by a set of ideals that historians call “the Cult of True Womanhood.” As men’s work moved away from the home and into shops, offices and factories, the household became a new kind of place: a private, feminized domestic sphere, a “haven in a heartless world.” “True women” devoted their lives to creating a clean, comfortable, nurturing home for their husbands and children.
During the Civil War, however, American women turned their attention to the world outside the home. Thousands of women in the North and South joined volunteer brigades and signed up to work as nurses. It was the first time in American history that women played a significant role in a war effort. By the end of the war, these experiences had expanded many Americans’ definitions of “true womanhood.” |
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921 and leader of the Progressive Movement. A southerner with a PhD in political science, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. He was Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, and led his Democratic Party to win control of both the White House and Congress in 1918.
|