What Are The Causes Of Reconstruction To The End Of The 19th Century

In the era of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, the United States underwent an economic change marked by the rapid expansion of big business. The rapid corporate growth in America started in the end of 1860s, after the end of Civil War. The first period of Big Business rise matched with important changes in the American society. These were the end of Civil War, abolishment of slavery and several other political reforms, resolution of social tension between the North and the South, and economic recovery of the South, known as Reconstruction. Unlike the Civil war, the rise of big businesses took place without violent political transformation because the past historical events already established all the political conditions for a peaceful economic change.
Wealthy people like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie had great influence and control over the post-Civil War economy and business in the United States. Although some of these large corporations led to the decrease in food and fuel, there were many small business owners and laborers who were left without jobs due to the deception and monopoly from these large business owners.
Many laborers were not satisfied with the standing of the United States due to the control of the large corporations.
Wealthy business owners of large corporations were not restricted in anything that they did. Corporations were able to change prices and fire employees without a cause, giving them control over the goods and services that they provided over the nation. Many laborers were upset that they had to work long hours in dangerous conditions for these businessmen who paid them low wages and took away their independence and individualism. Laborers also had little or no say in their government; they wanted government restored to the hands of an average person in order to end their
injustice.

The social tension around 1920’s was a large extent due to the recoil from Nativists and the KKK towards immigrants. With the immigrant outpouring threatening jobs and contaminating the white Anglo-Saxon society, the idea of nativism began to thrive through the minds of native born Americans. Social conflicts often came to violent tendencies by the hands of Ku Klux Klan. They had a nativist mindset however they focused primarily on African Americans but harbored hatred towards anyone who was not of Anglo Saxon descent. This movement made for a dangerous society and made matters worse for the poor working immigrants trying to survive.
Around this time nativists and labor unions fought for immigration restriction. In the early twenties there was an emergency immigration act that was passed which established a quota system that decimated the amount of immigrants granted access to the States. America by this time was overflowing with immigrants, up to 25 million people.
Nativists did everything they could to disrupt the immigrant progress in society, and with the economic prosperity of the twenties they realigned their beliefs behind religious and racial nativism. Nativists throughout the twenties focused their attention on the Catholics, Jews, and Europeans. These people were different than the immigrants that had come before meaning that they had much more difficulty adapting with the language barrier and even in appearance. Difficulty communicating made getting a job and education much more difficult.

President Wilson believed United States was a commercial power. He believed that you had to protect and supervise domestic and foreign industrialization. The only problem with this is that to protect and supervise you have to show power to control. Tensions with neighboring countries made it very difficult to divide being neutral and being an imperialist country. Germany had submarine blockades in effect during the war. Since the United States was helping the allies with commerce. Germany sunk US passenger ships along with trying to influence Mexico to be allies by promising to get back its old territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona forced the United States to go to war.
President Wilson sought peace and thought war was for savages. He thought problems could be fixed by diplomacy instead of war. Germany was using modern warfare and commerce to get what they wanted making it difficult for the United States to stay neutral.
Forced by corporate interests President Wilson had no choice but to make the United States one of the imperialist countries that he was trying not to be. The United States had to protect its borders as well as its interests worldwide. Since the war seemed to be coming to an end he felt that United States would not have too many casualties. The Unites States would stand to lose more if they did not intervene.
By the end of the war the American economy and military power had increased. So by joining late in the war United States had suffered less than the European countries. With the United States helping in the victory of the allies, made it more evident that they would be involved in any future confrontations.