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The entry of the United States into World War I changed the course of the war, and the war, in turn, changed America. Yet World War I receives short shrift in the American consciousness.
- Tom Christopher
World War I Through Letters, Diaries, and Other Personal...
- Meredith Hindley
During World War I, Edith Wharton Visited the Desert and...
- Summer 2017
Tru Life: How Truman Capote Became a Cautionary Tale of...
- Tom Christopher
Throughout history when soldiers go off to war they think, “Let’s go boys, we’re gonna be heroes!” And in fact, for the World War I soldiers, it turned out to be a harrowing experience with catastrophic violence.
- Women, most of whom never worked outside the home, were in high demand to work at all types of factories and businesses. Nearly a million women were employed in jobs previously held by men.
- Prior to the war, the women’s campaign for the right to vote fell on deaf ears. Afterward, even President Wilson urged Congress to pass the 19th amendment, which succeeded in 1920.
- Future President Herbert Hoover was appointed the director of the newly created U.S. Food Administration. Hoover encouraged citizens to plant “victory gardens” or personal gardens.
- One of the largest shifts in population in the 20th century was the movement African Americans made from the south to be employed in northern factories.
The Vietnam War was not the first war in which the public had been lied to, but the credibility gap added to the alienation of a large segment of the American public. Morris Dickstein described the impact of the war on so many individuals as a crossing
- Overview
- Land campaigns to 1778
The American Revolution—also called the U.S. War of Independence—was the insurrection fought between 1775 and 1783 through which 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies threw off British rule to establish the sovereign United States of America, founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. British attempts to assert greater control over colonial affairs after a long period of salutary neglect, including the imposition of unpopular taxes, had contributed to growing estrangement between the crown and a large and influential segment of colonists who ultimately saw armed rebellion as their only recourse.
salutary neglect
Learn more about salutary neglect, the British government policy that provided for loose imperial supervision of the North American colonies.
How did the American Revolution begin?
On the ground, fighting in the American Revolution began with the skirmishes between British regulars and American provincials on April 19, 1775, first at Lexington, where a British force of 700 faced 77 local minutemen, and then at Concord, where an American counterforce of 320 to 400 sent the British scurrying. The British had come to Concord to seize the military stores of the colonists, who had been forewarned of the raid through efficient lines of communication—including the ride of Paul Revere, which is celebrated with poetic license in Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861).
Battles of Lexington and Concord
Americans fought the war on land with essentially two types of organization: the Continental (national) Army and the state militias. The total number of the former provided by quotas from the states throughout the conflict was 231,771 men, and the militias totaled 164,087. At any given time, however, the American forces seldom numbered over 20,000; in 1781 there were only about 29,000 insurgents under arms throughout the country. The war was therefore one fought by small field armies. Militias, poorly disciplined and with elected officers, were summoned for periods usually not exceeding three months. The terms of Continental Army service were only gradually increased from one to three years, and not even bounties and the offer of land kept the army up to strength. Reasons for the difficulty in maintaining an adequate Continental force included the colonists’ traditional antipathy toward regular armies, the objections of farmers to being away from their fields, the competition of the states with the Continental Congress to keep men in the militia, and the wretched and uncertain pay in a period of inflation.
By contrast, the British army was a reliable steady force of professionals. Since it numbered only about 42,000, heavy recruiting programs were introduced. Many of the enlisted men were farm boys, as were most of the Americans. Others were unemployed persons from the urban slums. Still others joined the army to escape fines or imprisonment. The great majority became efficient soldiers as a result of sound training and ferocious discipline. The officers were drawn largely from the gentry and the aristocracy and obtained their commissions and promotions by purchase. Though they received no formal training, they were not so dependent on a book knowledge of military tactics as were many of the Americans. British generals, however, tended toward a lack of imagination and initiative, while those who demonstrated such qualities often were rash.
Because troops were few and conscription unknown, the British government, following a traditional policy, purchased about 30,000 troops from various German princes. The Lensgreve (landgrave) of Hesse furnished approximately three-fifths of that total. Few acts by the crown roused so much antagonism in America as that use of foreign mercenaries.
Britannica Quiz
war as 'fun for America' - 'a hell of a good time'.5 Clearly, the war years are seen as having long-term as well as short-term significance. The pathbreaking historian in this field, Richard Polenberg, pointed the way when he wrote that 'World War II radically altered the character of American society and
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This book presents new perspectives on the Vietnam War, its global repercussions, and the role of this war in modern history. The volume reveals “America’s War” as an international event that reverberated all over the world: in domestic settings of numerous nation-states, combatants and noncombatants alike, as well as in transna-tional ...
