The US is gaining ground. Spreading out across North America. The economy is booming. In the south there’s cotton. In the north, industry. But the new nation is divided. In a land where all men are created equal four million black Americans live as slaves. And it’s tearing the nation apart. America: The Story of the US e4: Division
Cotton: But its rapid spread will plant the seeds of war. Tropical cotton flourishes in American southern states. Its valuable soft fibres are easy to grow. But processing cotton is labor-intensive. By hand separating seeds from fibre in a couple of kilos of raw cotton could take a whole day. A simple patent filed on the 4th March 1794 changes that, the cotton gin. By automating the process it deeply divides the country. ibid.
By 1830 America is producing half the world’s cotton, by 1850 it’s nearly three-quarters. Cold white gold, cotton supports a new lavish lifestyle in the south. ibid.
With the cotton explosion, slavery becomes critical to the economy of the south. Slaves are now up to five times more valuable than before the invention of the cotton gin. ibid.
But over-production is destroying the land. So cotton heads west in search of fertile soil, bringing slavery with it. ibid.
The boom is powered on a new machine, the power loom. Raw cotton comes in, finished cloth goes out. All under one roof. The modern factory is born ... 85% are single women between fifteen and twenty-five. Harriet Robinson is ten. ibid.
The mills also revolutionised how Americans dressed. ibid.
And together they begin to make their voices heard. In October 1836 women from the Lowell Mills gather after work and organize. Their protest against wage cuts is one of the first strikes in US history. And they will win. The mill bosses backed down. A generation of young women go on to become teachers, writers and college graduates. Harriet Robinson would become a leading suffragette. ibid.
The North against the South. Brother against brother. America’s Civil War is the bloodiest in its history. America: The Story of the US e5: Civil War
The minié-ball is used by the North and South alike. Demand for this killer bullet runs so high that an entire industry springs up supplying minié-balls to the front line. ibid.
Manufacturing, technology, infrastructure: it will change the face of America. For the first time in history industry is put behind the war effort. An approach to conflict that America will exploit in the First and Second World Wars. It is the beginning of a new integrated economy that will become the hallmark of the modern United States. ibid.
Crossing the continent takes six months ... To unite east and west President Lincoln green-lights a transcontinental railroad. America: The Story of the US e6: Heartland
Eventually 10% of the United States would be given away under the Homestead Act. ibid.
Locusts: After devouring the local vegetation they release pheromones that signal it’s time to move on and grow long wings. ibid.
One out of three cowboys is Hispanic or Africa-American. ibid.
Barbed wire divides the plains into farms and ranches, and blocks the cattle trails. The open range is closed for ever. ibid.
By 1876 most of America’s 300,000 Native Americans have been forced on to government reservations. But resistance is still fierce. ibid.
On December 29th 1890 the last band of independent Sioux surrendered beside Wounded Knee Creek. ibid.
A new generation on a new frontier. Rising into the sky: gleaming towers of steel. A bold new urban landscape. America: The Story of the US e7: Cities
It takes twenty-five years for Liberty to oxidise and turn green. ibid.
[Andrew] Carnegie is the first ever to mass produce steel. In America prices plummet by over 80%. Output rockets from a few thousand tons in 1860 to eleven million by 1900. ibid.
[Jacob] Riis publishes his pictures in a book called How the Other Half Lives. It would sell more than twenty-eight million copies worldwide. ibid.
What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red, because I am Sioux, because I was born where my fathers lived, because I would die for my people and my country? Sitting Bull, to Major Brotherton
The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. Sitting Bull
recorded July 1881
The Myth of Pristine Wilderness: a land with no people does not exist. The idea that America was virgin land, a wilderness inhabited by non-people called savages, is a myth. Only through killing and displacement does it become uninhabited. Before the arrival of the British, north America was a continents villages, of nations, of confederations of nations. Exterminate All the Brutes IV: The Bright Colours of Fascism, HBO 2021
Kill anything that moves. Take no prisoners. In California, hunting Indians was both legal and profitable. $5 a head, 50 cents a scalp. In 1849 the American government paid more than a million dollars to Indian hunters. ibid.
In the beginning, the slaves had to clean the cotton with their bare hands. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney would change everything. But Cotton also destroyed the soil, while using slaves’ bodies like a commodity became the most lucrative enterprise around. More profitable than all lands, banks, railroads, factories and gold products put together. Slaves were used as collateral for mortgage, a newly developed tool of commerce. ibid.
By 1890, disarmed, held in concentration camps, their children taken away half-starved, the Lakota and Dakota survivors found a new resistance: ghost dancing. ibid.
Wounded Knee Massacre: East Indians killed: 300; Survivors: 51 (4 men, 47 women), Army casualties: 25 dead. ibid.
Frank Baum: The pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends on the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better in order to protect our civilisation follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the Earth. The fact is, the Native Americans are still here, and this is still their home … The real fight remains the fight for self-determination and restitution. ibid.
As writer James Baldwin says, ‘There is scarcely any hope for the American dream. Because people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence will wreck it.’ ibid.
Lost souls on a pile of human confusion. The absence of any trace of empathy and genuine humanity is unbearable. The nightmare is buried deep in our consciousness. So deep that we do not recognise its ghosts. ibid.
For the settlers along the American frontier it was the ultimate horror, a fate worse than death to be carried off by Indians. But for more than two centuries it happened to thousands of men, women and children. What was their fate? In Search of History s1e6: Captives, History 1996
Adoption was an ancient custom. ibid.
‘The act of capture is nearly always extraordinarily gentle.’ ibid.
Brothers – My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear to us? I know you will cry with me, Never! NEVER! Tecumseh, speech to council of Choctaw and Chickasaw nations 1811
The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in one common cause against the common foe. ibid.
Sitting Bull, the legendary American chief. Popular myth has him leading his people to great victory – The Battle of the Little Bighorn. But archaeological evidence from the battle site, military analysis of how the conflict unfolded, and oral history passed down the through generations, paint a dramatically different picture. Mystery Files: Sitting Bull, National Geographic 2011
The Dakotas’ land is invaded by white prospectors. ibid.
The US comes up with another plan: they will incite a war and take back the Black Hills as part of the spoils. ibid.
Sitting Bull and his people now become military targets. ibid.
Custer is left facing the full force of the Indian firepower. ibid.
New evidence suggests Sitting Bull was never on the battlefield at all. ibid.
Sitting Bull is a spiritual man, a sun-dancer, as well as caretaker or leader of his people. ibid.
Just five months after he is elected president for the second time Abraham Lincoln goes out to this theatre to watch a comedic play. It is 14th April 1865, Good Friday. Almost two hours into the performance John Wilkes Booth creeps into the presidential box and shoots Lincoln in the back of the head with a Derringer pistol. Mystery Files: Abraham Lincoln
It is the move towards black suffrage that leads directly to his death. ibid.