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Penguin History of the United States of America

Page 112

by Hugh Brogan


  of Second World War, 588

  Veterans Administration, 499, 588

  Vice–admiralty courts, 94, 130, 143, 155

  Vice–President of the United States, 145n, 261, 274, 311

  Vicksburg, seige of, 333, 336, 337

  Victoria, Queen, 247, 324

  ‘Viet Cong’ (National Liberation Front), 653–6, 659, 661

  Vietnam (see also Indo-China; War, Vietnamese), 647, 648, 650, 665

  North, 653

  South, 649, 650, 652, 653, 654–62 passim, 666, 671

  Vikings, 4, 5

  Villa, Pancho, 468

  Villard, Henry, 423

  Vinland, 4, 395, 397

  V. Sagas, 2

  Virginia, Commonwealth of

  colony, 7, 9, 13, 14–17, 19–29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41n, 51, 52, 64, 79, 84, 101, 103–8, 109n; in A. Revolution, 121, 150, 162, 165, 174, 182, 184–5

  state, 189, 191, 195, 199, 224, 226, 229, 257, 259, 276, 309, 370, 460, 504; and making of Constitution, 194, 195, 197, 199; ratification, 201, 203, 207–8; and slavery, 283, 284, 287, 289, 295; and secession, 313, 315–16, 317; in Civil War, 319, 325–6, 327, 335, 336, 340, 343–4

  Virginia, University of, 286

  Virginia Company of London, 18, 21, 23–6, 34, 36, 383

  Virginia Company of Plymouth, 18

  Volcker, Paul, 687

  Volstead Act, 502, 525

  Voters, 399, 401, 413, 442, 458, 482, 620

  Voting groups, 272–3, 363, 371, 372, 406, 623, 625, 630, 632

  Voting Rights Act (1965), 636, 642

  Wade-Davis bill, 340, 350

  Wages, 385, 390, 404, 416, 417, 417n, 443, 453, 464, 496, 505, 506, 511, 512, 531, 532, 541, 548, 567, 589, 618, 673–81

  W.-earners, 616, 617

  Wagner, Sen. Robert Ferdinand, 534

  Wagner Act, 535, 546, 548

  Wales, Welsh, 4, 14, 17, 76n, 95n, 394, 402

  Walker, Mayor James (‘Jimmy’), 503n, 531

  ‘Walking’ Purchase, 61

  Wall Street, New York, 385, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 429, 430, 462–4, 470, 477, 507–9, 510, 517, 525, 528, 543, 609

  Wallace, George, 661, 662, 664

  Wallace, Henry A., 537–8, 596

  on baby pigs, 537

  as Vice-Pres., 538, 582, 599

  Wallowa valley, Oregon, 69

  Walpole, Horace, junior, quoted, 141, 142, 180–81

  Walpole, Horace, senior, quoted, 73

  Walpole, Sir Robert, 74, 76, 79, 109, 113

  Walsh, Sen. David Ignatius, 559

  War, as a factor in history, 405, 435–6

  War

  Thirty Years, 12, 17

  English Civil, 12, 14, 48

  Second Dutch, 81

  King Philip’s, 53, 57, 63

  of the Austrian Succession (‘King George’s war’), 76, 119, 130

  Seven Years (‘French and Indian’), 66, 76, 79, 80, 85–6, 93, 109, 110–11, 124, 150, 168, 180, 181–2, 192; Americans in, 130

  Cherokee, 119, 221

  of the A. Revolution (‘of A. Independence’), 112, 132, 135, 149, 165–6, 167–85, 188, 188–9n, 196, 250, 259, 378

  Creek, 66

  French revolutionary, 260

  of 1812, 227, 253–5, 266, 269, 276, 319, 437

  Mexican, 56n, 240, 240, 297, 316, 319, 436, 441

  American Civil, 50, 68, 167, 204, 209, 212, 230, 236, 243, 244, 245, 268, 269, 273, 284, 288, 290, 293, 358, 362, 363, 365, 370, 377, 378, 406, 407, 425, 436, 438, 442, 468, 515, 615; causes of, 310; outbreak, 314; course, 315–45; names of battles in, 321n; casualties in, 345; and rise of capitalism, 383–6

  Spanish-American, 436–41, 450, 468

  Russo-Japanese, 442, 605

  First World (see also War loans), 377, 438, 445, 450, 496, 512, 526, 544, 552, 561, 607; and blacks, 619; Bolshevik Revolution and, 478; US entry, 448, 558; immigration and, 406, 478–9; outbreak, 462, 464, 467; the South and, 616, 622; 1930s inquest on, 555

  Second World, 212–13, 214, 361, 484n, 502, 513, 517n, 527, 529, 540, 553, 554, 586, 599, 637, 650, 657, 661–2, 663, 672; w. agencies, 569; Office of War Mobilisation, 569; and blacks, 621–5; causes of, 551–2; US entry, 566; home front, 566–70; and Indo-China, 647; and the South, 621

  cold see Cold war

  Korean, 590, 604–7, 609, 611, 623, 647–8, 651, 657, 658, 662

  Vietnam, 608, 613, 642, 667, 669, 670, 672, 682, 691; Cambodia, invasion of, 661–2; casualties, 656, 663; ‘domino theory’ and, 651; My Lai massacre, 656; origins, 646–53; US participation, 653–64; Tet offensive, 659; Tonkin Gulf, incident and resolutions, 653

  Gulf War (1991), 693

  War debts, 498–9, 507, 512, 560

  War Debts Commission, 499

  War Department, 356

  ‘War Hawks’, 254, 266

  War Industries Board (1917–19), 477, 531

  War loans, 487

  Warren, Chief Justice Earl, 213, 568, 626

  Washington, Booker T., 371, 415, 420

  Washington, DC (see also White House), city of, 210–11, 254, 255, 269, 276, 305, 316, 319, 321, 322, 326, 332, 336, 341, 345, 355, 378, 451, 479, 499, 516, 521, 525, 538, 550, 634, 638, 644

  Capitol, 521

  Capitol Hill, 461

  Watergate building, 665

  Washington, Gen. George (Pres. 1789–97), 67, 104, 105, 106, 156, 162, 221, 262, 267, 288, 321, 340, 378, 444, 461, 468, 485, 492, 544, 549, 597, 608, 684

  character, 170–71 335

  in Stamp Act crisis, 132n

  takes command, 166

  as Revolution general, 169, 170–71, 178, 179–80, 182–3, 184, 185

  at Constitutional Convention, 195, 196–8

  and ratification of Constitution, 200–201, 203

  as President, 204, 209, 210, 249, 250, 252, 256–61

  death, 264

  quoted, on T. Paine, 173; ‘grey and blind’, 185; on raising a standard, 186; on postwar recovery, 188; on Shays’s rebellion, 190–91; on Georgia, 201; Farewell Address, 249, 252, 256; (mentioned, 437, 647); also quoted, 120, 150, 167, 171, 183, 196, 201

  Washington, migration ship, 396

  Washington Naval Conference, 495, 499, 562

  treaty, 553

  Washington Post, 666

  Watergate affair, 665–8, 669, 671, 672, 691

  Watson, Thomas Edward, 428

  Watt, James, 689

  Wayne, John, 657, 684

  Weatherboarding, Essex, 48

  Weaver, Gen. James Baird, 426–7, 428, 431

  Webster, Daniel, 231, 266, 273, 277, 299

  Second Reply to Hayne, quoted, 318

  Weld, Theodore, 293

  Welfare state, American, 540, 638, 642, 673, 690

  Welles, Gideon, 319, 322, 354

  on Emancipation Proclamation, 330

  West, the American, 219–48, 270, 271, 272, 274, 301, 305, 393, 396, 397, 407, 417n, 421–5

  in Civil War, 335–6, 340

  and civil rights movement, 637

  West Indies see Caribbean

  West Point, NY (US Military Academy), 316, 325, 336, 656

  West Side Story, 641n

  Western lands, 120, 191–2

  Western Trail, 379

  Western Union Co., 565

  Westmoreland, Gen. William, 655, 656, 658–9

  Whaling see Fishing

  Whately, Thomas, 114

  Wheat, 305, 422, 423, 424, 443, 482, 513, 515, 537, 567

  Wheeling, West Virginia, 598

  Whig beliefs, 134, 144, 154, 164, 175, 177, 196

  Whig Party (American), 236, 241, 275–9, 297–301 passim, 302, 303, 304, 308, 311, 357, 370, 409, 426

  Conscience and Cotton Whigs, 300–301

  Whigs, American see Patriots

  Whigs, English, 77–8, 79, 111, 154, 164

  and Parliament, 185

  Whipple, Bishop Henry Benjamin, 64

  Whisky rebellion, 259, 425

  White, Walter, 620

  White Citizens Councils, 627, 6
28

  White House, 210, 228, 254, 273, 332, 408, 455, 489, 491, 517, 522, 523n, 535n, 553, 569, 664, 666, 667, 673, 690

  ‘that man in the W.H.’, 528, 555

  White Pine Acts, 118

  White primary, 371n, 620, 624

  White supremacy, 360, 363, 366, 369, 371–2, 548, 622, 627, 629, 632, 635, 637

  and class, 640

  Whitefield, Rev. George, 91, 91n

  Whites, Northern, 640–41

  Whites, Southern, 287–8, 308, 339, 362–5, 371–2, 415, 625, 636

  Whitman, Walt, 297

  Whitney, Eli, 229, 286, 378

  Wilderness, battle of the, 340, 437

  Wilderness Road, 223–4

  Wiley, Harvey, 454

  Wilkes, Capt. Charles, USN, 324, 325

  Wilkes, John, 136, 154, 155, 164, 211

  Wilkes affair, 133

  Wilkins, Roy, 634

  William III, King, 78

  William and Mary College, 104

  Williams, Roger, 45, 49

  Williamsburg, Virginia, 104, 162, 165, 170, 184

  Willkie, Wendell, 558–9, 569

  Wilmot, Cong. David, 298–9

  Wilmot Proviso, 298–9

  Wilson, Edmund, 285n

  Wilson, James, 195, 200, 201, 206–8, 209

  Wilson, Thomas Woodrow (Pres. 1913–21), 210, 433n, 448, 450, 452, 492, 493, 495, 498, 499, 501, 512, 522, 531, 546, 549, 550, 557, 569, 581. 603, 610, 635, 647, 680, 687

  as reforming Pres., 459–65, 466

  and Mexico, 468

  in First World War, 469–82

  Fourteen Points, 479–81, 482, 487, 576

  and Versailles treaty, 481–8

  illness of, 487–8

  reputation in 1930s, 555

  compared to F. D. Roosevelt, 575–6

  Winthrop, John, 10, 42–6, 49, 50, 60, 87, 93

  Wisconsin, 230, 290, 303, 385, 397, 402, 426, 456, 599, 608, 609

  Witchcraft, 45, 91, 106

  Withers, John, 81

  Wolfe, Gen. James, 79

  Women, 234, 243, 244–5, 292, 416

  feminism, 678

  minimum wage, 546

  (white) and slavery, 285

  women slaves, 101, 286

  and the suffrage, 279, 410, 412, 427, 428, 458, 464—5, 466

  Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 555

  Women’s movement, 678, 694

  Working class see Class, industrial and urban working

  Works Progress

  Administration (WPA), 540, 569

  and Southern blacks, 618–19

  Wright, Jonathan Jasper, 360

  Wright, Orville and Wilbur, 447

  Writs of assistance (or assistants), 123, 143, 154, 211, 213n

  Wyoming, 241, 380, 568

  XYZ affair, 252

  Yadkin river, 221, 224

  Yale College and University, 92

  Yalta conference and agreements, 575, 581, 591, 597

  Yalu river, 606, 607, 653

  Yamamoto, Admiral, 564–6, 571

  Yancey, Cong. William Lowndes, 307, 310, 319

  Yates, Robert, 200

  Yellowstone National Park, 69, 689

  York river, 326

  Yorktown, siege of, 184–5, 326

  Young, Brigham, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236–45

  Youngstown, Ohio, 514

  Yugoslavia, 604

  Yukon, 421

  Zangwill, Israel, 405

  Zimmermann telegram, 475–6, 555

  1 From The Vinland Sagas, translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (Penguin Books, 1965), p. 98.

  2 The Portuguese still know better than the English how to make cod palatable.

  3 R. A. Billington, Westward Expansion (New York, 1949), p. 38. Billington does not give his authority for this striking passage.

  4 Though some now think that the earliest Indians may have hunted many great species to extinction immediately after the Ice Age – for instance, the American horse.

  1 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, Yale paperback edn, 1964), Vol. i, p. 49.

  2 The first edition had appeared in 1589, directly after the defeat of the Armada.

  3 Ignorance of the North American interior was still almost total. The existence of the Appalachian mountains was known, but their length was not; and the vast extent of the continent was quite unguessed. Knowledge of Caribbean and North American waters, on the other hand, was much improved, thanks to the sea-dogs.

  4 In the interests of consistency and general readability I have reluctantly modernized the spelling in this and all other quotations.

  5 £12 IOS was the price of a share in the Virginia Company. See below, p. 24.

  6 Andrews, The Colonial Period, Vol. i, p. 57.

  7 See Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen (New York, 1968), passim, and especially Chapter XI, ‘The First Swarming of the English’. Professor Bridenbaugh estimates that ‘between 1620 and 1642, close to 80,000, or 2 per cent of all Englishmen’ emigrated. He makes the important point that about 20,000 of them went to the continent, not to America; and singles out economic conditions as the chief cause of restlessness.

  8 Andrews, The Colonial Period, Vol. i, p. 55.

  9 Probably giving Trinculo his idea for displaying Caliban at English fairs: ‘when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian’ (The Tempest, II, 2).

  10 For more about Pocahontas see below, p. 21. According to Rolfe, he married her ‘for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our country, for the glory of God, for my own salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving creature’. She is buried at Gravesend.

  11 Except that it has been turned into an excellent historical museum.

  1 Sassafras was ‘useful’ because it was thought to be a cure for venereal disease.

  2 When the settlers’ ships arrived off Jamestown, they ‘moored to the trees in six fathom water’.

  3 The name Virginia, originally given to a much vaster area, was soon monopolized by the Jamestown settlement, and the opening-up of New England began the long process of differentiating the various regions of North America by name.

  4 Damper and less mild in the seventeenth century than it is today.

  5 This was thought to be important, as it was feared that the Spanish might attempt to snuff out the colony before it could be a trouble to them. So they would have, but for the somewhat mysterious forbearance of Philip III. Perhaps he thought the colony was certain to fail. The Virginians themselves were less passive. An expedition was dispatched in 1613 to extinguish a French settlement in Nova Scotia, which it did without undue fuss, tenderness or cruelty.

  6 That is, they had to catch the diseases and survive – a kill-or-cure, ‘natural’, indeed Darwinian process of immunization.

  7 See below, p. 25.

  8 When in 1861 Robert E. Lee agonized over the necessity of choosing between his country and his state and decided for the latter, he was acting in that state’s oldest, and most insurgent, tradition.

  9 Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery (London, 1997), p. 240.

  10 Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History (London, 1993), pp. 60-61.

  1 See above, pp. 5-6.

  2 The successful Puritan insistence on a preaching ministry explains why in America, which has largely taken its religion from the Puritans, the term ‘preacher’ is so widely used as a synonym for priest, clergyman, parson or minister.

  3 Epistle to the Romans viii, 30.

  4 New England Puritanism, for various reasons, decided that conversion was a slow process, not a lightning flash; but in this, as in several other important respects, it differed sharply from the mainstream – from its English predecessors, and its American successors.

  5 See also Ralegh’s lines written in prison under sentence of death:

  Give me my scallop shell of quiet, />
  My staff of faith to walk upon,

  My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

  My bottle of salvation,

  My gown of glory, hope’s true gage!

  And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

  6 Nor, in view of what was to happen after 1642, can this theory, that popular religion was necessarily subversive, be regarded as altogether mistaken.

  7 Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison (New York, 1966), p. 10. Bradford (1590–1657) was to be for many years the Governor, and the historian, of the first Separatist settlement in New England. I quote him extensively.

  8 The second edition of which (1622) contains interesting material describing the first days of the Plymouth settlement.

  9 The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, Book VI. This passage was not published until 1624, after the Pilgrims had settled in New England and sent back accounts of the cold winters and shortage of food. Smith had the true booster attitude to such faintheartedness. If all was not Paradise today, it would be tomorrow.

  10 At this date the Company owed £75,000: a debt incurred in its attempt to settle its own lands itself.

  11 James I asked how the settlers proposed to live. ‘By fishing,’ was the reply. ‘So God have my soul,’ said the King,’ ‘tis an honest trade, ‘twas the apostles’ own calling.’

  12 Andrews, The Colonial Period, Vol. i, p. 269 fn. 1. The description is based on likelihoods: no plan or picture of Mayflower survives, but she was a typical merchant ship of the period.

  13 Early in the eighteenth century a large rock was identified as the first bit of America touched by the Pilgrims’ feet. Being unconvincingly far up Plymouth beach, it had to be moved down to the water’s edge to satisfy visitors’ notions of how history ought to happen.

  14 For example, that in the second edition of New England’s Trials.

  15 Bradford himself.

 

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