He turned it into his editor who simply refuse to print it. He said i own the paper. He said why . If i print this editorial there will not be a brick left in this building tomorrow. I was wondering, there is a lot of controversy over reconstruction and amnesty in the congress. Did you look at beyond Andrew Johnson, the more deeply into the way the members of congress, and how that their reaction . Martha i have a chapter in the book called glee. The confederates and the copperheads. I have a few pages at the end where i write about the responses of the radical republicans in congress. I only have a few pieces of evidence. In these diary entries, the radical republicans expressed a certain relief that lincoln had been assassinated. They worry they were going to treat the confederacy with too much leniency. It is at the end of the chapter print one of the members of congress wrote down in his diary he was disgusted by how his comrades seem so relieved lincoln had been assassinated. What is fascinating about this lenience model is, people were struggling with their faith and why god had taken lincoln away. On the one hand people were trying to figure out was he the model of we should treat the confederates, or did god take him away because he was too lenient . As i think i said in my talk, the faithful decide got had taken lincoln away because he was too lenient. Then, at the same time, his most radical mourners hold him up as a model of radical reconstruction. There are all kinds of twists and turns. What happens is the radical members of congress who express believe relief, they and others think that lincoln would have been more lenient than Andrew Johnson. Ive seen this all across my research. Thank god johnson is president. He will treat the confederates as they deserve. It is true johnson hated the southern aristocracy. People didnt count on white mourners, johnson hated black people more than he hated the confederates. Africanamericans did not have that lag time. They figure that out. Editors will say things like johnson is from the class of poor white southerners. They hate black people. They didnt make that mistake. White northerners think that he will get there give them there, pins. There was a window of a shop in mississippi after the assassination, black mourners looking at that picture of lincoln. A new york tribune reporter went and talked to them. They told him they were afraid for their future because lincoln was dead. The reporter told them not to worry because they had Andrew Johnson on their side. It was a striking transformation the first little while after the assassination with radical republicans liking Andrew Johnson. Charles sumner wrote to a friend in england telling him it was going great. We are on board for male suffrage. In may, forget what i told you he is turning. Johnson is not to be trusted. The turnabout was quick in two steps. People understood johnson was not the friend of black people. I just want comments if i can on John Wilkes Booth since he has, on several context. I think martha ran into the same thing that i did. The killing of booth took place at the 26th of april. 12 days after the assassination. The funeral train was between albany and buffalo when the news was announced. They arrive in buffalo. There are already news men selling pictures of John Wilkes Booth to the crowd walking to see the body of lincoln. There is a fear on the part of anyone in washington that there is going to be so much devotion of booth expressed in northern cities like buffalo, that he takes over this situation. The micro manages the body of booth, denying any Public Knowledge of where the body is. In order not only but partly to protect the funeral pageant of lincoln from being demoted in public attention. That dynamic between the body of booth in the body of lincoln is a fascinating story. It shows the importance of lincolns body more than it would in his own right. To see how he is managing both bodies at once. Making sure no one engages in self play with lincolns body and hiding booths body. He gets flack from democrats and republicans for being so secretive booths body. On that fascinating point it was a mistake. Half of the country didnt trust him. They thought what is he hiding . Why did we see the body . Then you have the stories booth wasnt killed. That is the start of that. It is too bad. Thegovernment of a round of applause for our speakers. This weekend, the cspan2 has partnered to learn about the history and literary life of columbus, georgia. Inside the museum is the remains of a confederate ironclad, the css jackson. This was built in columbus during the war. The oval shapes are the gun ports of the jackson. The jackson is armed with six brooke rifles. The particular rifle we are filing today was built specifically for the jackson. It was cast at the selma naval works in selma, alabama, and completed in january of 1865. Real claim to fame is directly connected to the fact there are only quite general ironclads from the civil war we can study right now. The jackson is right here. That is why this facility is here. It is first and foremost to tell the story of this particular ironclad and show people the more than just one or two. There were many. Announcer whats all of our events watch all of our events. Announcer next, the professor talks about modernist art movement, labor and rest, race riots, and other destabilizing events he argues characterized the late 19teens and 20s. Professor holden suggests that violent labor strikes were actually an attempt by workers to bring democracy into the workplace by overturning topdown management. He also describes how radical movements in art and literature clashed with the dominant cultural norms of the time. This class is just under an hour. I want to look at the debate in the early 20th century over what is called modernism. And how these debates are going to work into some of the anxieties we have been talking about really all semester about the rise of modern america and spilling over into the postwar years. To start with, lets look at some quotes from people we have heard from before in the semester to reestablish what the progressive ethos was. Walter lippman, 1914. He says we can no longer treat life as something that will trickle down to us. We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, formulate its methods, educate and control it. A classic progressive era approach. Jane adams. Our friend jane adams. She writes, life in the settlement discovers above all it has been called the extraordinary pliability of human nature. A phrase she probably got from john stuart mill. And it seems impossible to set any bounds to the moral capability that might unfold under ideal civic and educational conditions. The point that we have been following all semester is that within progressivism there was this strong sense that in an industrialized United States large problems needed to be addressed, but that also with the development or the discovery of new knowledge, new ways of understanding, that these problems could be addressed, and thats a big deal, right . Reforms could be enacted in society, in the lives of those living in the United States could be made better, happier, more fulfilled. That in a nutshell is what we have been doing all semester. Now think of people born in, say 1840, what they had witnessed by the time the United States became involved in world war i in 1917. Look at all that has changed in terms of philosophic and scientific innovation. These are just some of the biggies, right . Charles darwin. Darwin comes along and the fundamentals of his theory will eventually change our basic notions of where the human race comes from. Big deal. The old belief that humans were created intact a few thousand years ago is now challenged by the view, the modern scientific view, that the human family had evolved over millions of years. Freud, sigmund freud. He challenges how we understand our own motivations and our own actions in ways that were disturbing to some. Freuds work explores the subconscious. That there are memories or ideas in our minds that affect our bodies and that compel behavior, and we may not be fully aware of them. Ok . This is a huge, Seismic Shift in our own thoughts of what it is that makes us tick. Albert einstein in physics early 1900s. Theory of relativity. Einstein comes along to say time is not time and space is not space in the way we previously understood time and space. That is to say, unchanging absolute. Those born in 1840 like the british poet thomas hardy began to raise questions about this modern questioning. Questioning the questioning. Fearful it was all going too far, wondering if all of these innovations and complexities of modernity were not perhaps deluding humanity from some essential reckoning from god or nature. In 1912, for example, people could fly. The wright brothers. They could drive an automobile. Ford Motor Company will produce its one millionth car in 1915. A few could listen to the radio. Not very many, although it is coming. Many more could go to the movies, listen to the phonograph, the victrola, as they would call it. There was a sense among some that we were becoming too obsessed with what we can do and we can sure do a whole lot more than we could just a few years prior, but the result is this lingering fear, that we do not know who we are anymore we are less certain about who we are and what makes us tick, even though we can do a lot more stuff, right . It may be wonderful to have planes, trains, and automobiles, but someone could ask the question, are they really good if we do not know ourselves anymore . So, thomas hardy then. A poet, 1912, writes the convergence of the twain. In this poem he writes, as the smart ship grew in stature grace, and hew and shadowy silent distance grew, the iceberg, too. Reference to . Titanic. Titanic. Very good. The sinking of the titanic was to some, symbolic. Symbolic of too much innovation, too much flaunting our ability to transcend natures limits. Flight. The panama canal. Automobiles. The harnessing of electricity. And now perhaps nature had struck back. Maybe god had struck back. Thomas hardy in his poem also describes the pride of life that planned her. And he capitalizes p and l. Meaning all of the modern technology and innovations that went into building the dazzling showpiece of a Passenger Ship and all of the hubris that seemed to accompany its building. What is hubris . Good liberal arts college word. What is hubris . Excessive pride . Excessive pride. Yes. Arrogance. Good. Ok. We will get a sense of where we are headed in terms of this clash. This leads us into really what we are going to wrestle with tonight and that is the rise of modernism. Modernism is a kind of expression of these new thoughts. We will look at the impact on art and poetry and literature, and then of course we will look at the fears of modernism, that it generated and raised across american society. A good place to start is right here, the armory show in 1913, new york city. In march of 1913, the organizers of the International Exhibition of modern art the organizers were this group. The association of american painters and sculptors. Put on this huge, huge exhibition of the latest in modern art, modernist art from europe, with some american painters and artist included as well. And because it was held at the 69th infantry regiment armory if you think about it, that is an interesting place to have the latest, boldest art, in an armory this is referred to as simply the armory show. The 1913 armory show. It brought together really the leading lights of the Modernist Movement from europe and the United States. Organizers estimated over 50,000 people attended the exhibit and this was really a whos who. Picasso, gauguin, cezanne, delacroix, kandinsky, marcel duchamp, and on and on and on. Its a massive exhibit. 1200 painters and sculptors. Impressionists, post impressionists, and most controversial of all, the cubists. So, as this exhibit was being set up in capturing the nations attention, a lot of the press seemed to be focused on the french painter henri matisse. A postimpressionists. I will give you a couple examples of matisses work. Ok. Gives you a sense of how he paints. Another quick example. This is one that was on display at the armory show. He is a post impressionist. He is messing with lines here a little bit. The New York Times, for example, so fascinated with matisse, they sent a reporter to france to interview him and from this interview then, what you have, we get a good sense both of what these modern artists were attempting to do, and also why their critics disliked them so much. So, you have before you then just a little snippet from this article, this interview with matisse. What is your theory on art, the reporter asked . Take that table for example. I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me. Later on, the reporter tell me, i said, pointing to an extraordinarily lumpy clay study of a nude woman with limbs of fearful length, why . I like that. Points. Why . He picked up a small japanese statue with head all out of proportion to the body. Is that not beautiful . No, i replied boldly. I see no beauty where there is lack of proportion. Then, matisse then you are back to the classical, the formal. We are trying to express ourselves boldly, in the 20th century, not what the greeks saw. Here is a key line. Above all, the great thing is to express oneself. The reporter. I thought of the celebrated canvas matisse wants produced of blue tomatoes. Why blue, he was asked . Because i see them that way, and i cannot help it if no one else does. And so this interview goes on and on and on, right, but matisse as a modern artist is less impressed with copying the techniques and forms of previous generations. We see how the new artists are placing greater premium on the emotional power of the work. Moreover, they sought some deeper emotional relationship to their work to achieve a kind of emotional fulfillment through their work. And therefore whether the end result looks like the subject matters less and less. They are using their art to access something within. Does that sound like freud . Yeah, i think it does. Ok, but coming after the powerful realist movement, the previous generation, mid 19th century painting, the realist movement, which, as you can probably tell by the name, realist, realism, attempted to capture the subject, right . That is to say the peasant working in the field actually looked like the peasant working in a field. Given that kind of backdrop, we can see, we can imagine then how what the impressionist and what the post impressionist and the cubist, and how what they were doing was seen as revolutionary. One of the classic examples of realist art is titled arrangement in gray and black the artists mother. What do we know that painting as . You will know it as soon as i put it up. Ah. Whistlers mother. James whistler, 1871. Why is it a realist painting . We can probably take it on pretty good confidence this is what mrs. Whistler wouldve looked like, bless her heart. So ok. All right. Against this kind of realism that the postimpressionists and the cubists are working against and the matisse is certainly different from whistlers mother but it is a far cry from what the cubists are about to do. So if the critics thought that matisse was wild and revolutionary, they fell all over themselves when looking at the work of cubist painters like pablo picasso, or sell duchamp marcel duchamp, all of these artists on display at the armory show. Let me give you three quick little examples of cubist art. Again, contrast with what were seeing here, ok . Dances at the spring. Whats going on here . Good question. Well, dances at the spring evidently. The point is how different it is from whistlers mother, from the whole realist school. Picasso. Woman in a mustard pot. Ok. And then finally, marcel duchamp, nude descending. So, these are just three of those. You get a sense of the cubist genre here. What are we seeing . What were seeing is a further disorienting of lines and overall structure. The cubists, on purpose, fracture the traditional form, the subject as it were. It is all broken up and reassembled. And reassembled. And this spoke also to the artists temper and some of the philosophical motivations of the time, and that is things are not what they seem or may not be what they seem. Ok . Especially with einstein and some of freuds influence. This is a thought that is starting to take hold, starting to take root. What we thought was time and space turns out not to be time and space, at least not the way we thought it was. Things like that. You can see this now working its way into art. That what we thought was true, real, more solid, absolute, that these things can be broken down, and then they can be reassembled. Truth or art or life itself can be broken down, but then reassembled in a way that has greater meaning and value than it could previously. From this point then, we should be able to make the link from this artistic sensibility we are describing and the kind of social reforms at jane adams might advocate. If we think about the adams biography, that whole progressive ethos. These problems in society can be broken down and they can be reassembled to make life better, to have more meaning. In a way, that is what these artists are doing. They are breaking down the subject, right . And then they are reassembling. Critics of modernism however, as we will see, tended to focus on the breaking down part. They tended to focus on that a lot. Cubism then provoked some very Strong Negative reactions. It seemed to to the encouraging it seemed to symbolize, maybe even be encouraging the feeling of the disintegration of the modern world itself. So the reaction against cubism is really strong. Ok. For instance, this article that i passed out here in the fresno morning republican, september 27, 1913. In that little article that i copied for you here, the writer makes a really interesting connection between cubism and labor radicalism. He says if the iw do you iww make you angry and you find it difficult to find them within the pale of human charity, try the antidote of going out and exploring the violent world of the art annex. Before you get out you will regard the iww as rational and lawabiding citizens. He goes on, the violent ward is where these paintings are held. Cubism and futurism run riot, so riotous indeed they will not even stay in their frames. For this is liberty and free art cannot confine itself within its mere frame. Here is a room full of pictures that represent neither things nor thoughts nor even emotions but disordered visions, manias and delirium. Ok, so heres the question then. What is the connection between how is this person connecting cubism and the iww . Who were the iww . Their nickname is the wobblies. The wobblies. The wobblies were, for that time, probably the most radical Labor Organization. The old knights of labor have long subsided. The American Federation is pretty popular, but they take a much more conciliatory approach to labor relations, and this is one of the reasons we get groups like the iww, the Industrial Workers of the world. Who get this awesome nickname of the wobblies. The wobblies then did advocate aggressive confrontation with mine owners in the west for example. They did sort of encourage even violence, perhaps, on certain occasions. Ok . Certainly they were seen as the most radical Labor Organization of the time. To a lot of middleclass types and business owners, mention of the iww, the wobblies, sent chills and shivers down their backs. Great concern and consternation of the wobblies. So, in this context, this article that links cubism with the kind of labor confrontation advocated by the wobblies, right, is really telling. It is really telling. It really gets at those anxieties that modernism was generating and sort of spreading. It was not confined to just art. Critics of cubists are very easily, quickly able to make the connection between the kind of disruption the cubists had done to traditional art form and the kind of disruption the wobblies advocated in labormanagement relations. Ok. Another example, this interview that the New York Times holds with this artist named kenyon cox. March 15, 1913. Kenyon cox was himself an american painter born in the 1850s, but at this stage in his life he was known as much for being a critic and an art theorist. As opposed to just his work as an artist. He responded very forcefully to the rise of cubism. Very early on, you can see the sympathies of the New York Times. Just out of the bat with this article, the times writes, the artist was found in his handsome studio in slippered ease, an old corncob pipe between his teeth. What kind of image does that convey . That . What are they trying to say about kenyon cox . He seems like a good old southern boy . Not necessarily southern. Maybe the corncob pipe. One he was born in the 1860s. Hes not that old. More respected. Respected. Very stable, very practical. This is important. Even in this article, being able to convey this image of cox of being well settled in slippered ease. I love that. Stable. Because then he is going to talk about cubists and the implication that cubists arent. Keep in mind this interview with henri matisse. So, kenyon cox on the cubists. They maintain they have invented a symbolism that expresses their individuality, or as they say, their soul. Their souls. If they really expressed their soul in the things they show us, god help their souls. Right . Because in their souls, tomatoes are blue. Then he makes this important link between modernism and painting and literature and cox here raises a very important question. He says, if the literary man were to say, wiggility waggility, wiggilty and tell you that combination of letters gives you the impression of dawn, how will you say that it doesnt . How are you going to prove it does not . Thats a pretty good question there, isnt it . Cubism and modernism represent for him a tendency to abandon all discipline all respect for , tradition and to insist that art shall be nothing but an expression of the individual. So, again cox has raised a very important point regarding modernism and cubism. If all that matters to the painter, to the artist is what he or she feels inside, what happens if that view, that conviction moves beyond the realm of art . What then . Its a fair question. The thing, he concludes, is pathological, its hideous, and worst of all for cox, it is popular. These men have seized on the modern engine of publicity and are making insanity pay. The New York Times ran an Opinion Column the same day as the interview, supporting kenyon coxs views. And here you see a depiction that sets him up differently from the image we have of the cubist artists. He is described as someone who expresses the view of the sound artists and a rational human being. Therefore, he is our guy. We can count on him. This opinion piece then says, it should be borne in mind that this movement is surely a part of the discernible movement all over the world to disrupt and degrade, if not to destroy, all of art and literature and society, too. You can see how quickly the critics of modernism move from being critical of the art itself to arriving at these very large conclusions or fears that grow out of this sort of artistic sensibility. My god. If this is allowed here, where does it stop . Ok . It continues they have their counterparts not only in politics but in all forms of art including music and the industrial movement. There is iww again, the wobblies. And in philanthropy as well. There only need seems to be that all is old is bad, all that is improved is false, all that has been cherished should be destroyed, all that is beautiful should be despised, all that is obvious should be ignored. Yikes. Wow. Ok, moving on then. Some of the poets and novelists of the day were also breaking down traditional forms storylines, the very structure of writing itself. American poets like ezra pound William Carlos williams, t. S. Eliot all reflect the rise of modernism in american poetry. One very quick example is William Carlos williams, very famous poem the red wheelbarrow, from 1923. I will go ahead and read all of it. Here it comes. So much depends on a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. Right . So much depends . What is going on here . Williams does not say. If he is saying the Little Things matter, he is saying the Little Things matter, but grand ideas dont . It is not clear. And that is part of the point. Another of the famous modernist poets was t. S. Eliot. Born in missouri, which he quickly left and spent most of his adult life in europe. One of his most famous poems, he implemented a recurring theme that basically says, we cant know what another person is actually saying or what they mean. So in this poem, one of his most famous, the love song of j. Alfred prufrock the story, it appears, the rambling thoughts of the middleaged man. This is the impression that his left. The opening lines are somewhat famous. It begins we have little bits of it here. It begins, let us go then, you and i when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient he theorized on the table. It goes on, i have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker and in short, i was afraid. What i want to draw our attention to is how he keeps coming back to this theme. For instance when he writes if one settling the pillow by her head should say, that is not what i meant at all, that is not it at all. And a little later it is impossible to say just what i mean. And again, if one settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl and turning to the window should say, that is not it at all. That is not what i meant at all. So when you read this poem it reads somewhat as string of stream of consciousness. Which is sort of fitting. This flow of words. It wasnt. He actually worked very hard on it, but nevertheless, you get that impression. But those scenes i pulled out here, it is undermining a 19thcentury confidence in the power and accuracy of words. Eliot writes, it is impossible to say just what i mean. That is not what i meant at all. The meaning of words themselves, let alone the meaning of truth or love or beauty is slippery. Its hard to pin down. Life in this complicated modern world calls for new forms of expression. Ok. Now lets look at the other side of this debate here. It will come as no surprise to you, im sure, traditional religion and modernism clashed. Religion, after all, harkens for the eternal unchanging truth and modernism, as we have been seeing is built on the inside insight that the truth may not be what we thought it was after all. And by the early 1900s, there seems to be a lot of evidence. It is hard not to peek ahead, to see part of the negative reaction, especially among the young, to the death and destruction of world war i. Not that this disillusion started with world war i, but world war i certainly added to it. As we have seen in some of the books we have read this semester, right, some of those truths that young people have been raised on included the idea that war was noble. That war invigorated american manhood. But for a lot of americans in the aftermath of world war i proud of the effort to be sure had to admit that the Actual Experience had been one that jennifer keenes book captures this perfectly bad planning hideous conditions, extreme terror, let alone death and carnage. Much of it seemed eventually not right away much of it seemed eventually senseless. We will come back to that as we are wrapping up. At any rate, many traditional believers despised the ambiguities, the relativity, the tearing down that seem to be so much a part of modernism. So to put this debate another way, what was liberating to modernists was cultural or social destruction to traditionalists. Ok, so the question then is, what do you do . How do you respond . First off, we should note that by far, most americans were able to accommodate themselves to the changing modern world, even if it could be very confusing at times. By far most americans got on with their lives. I do not want to give the impression that all americans, but the modernists, were but the modernists, were wringing their hands about the downfall of civilization. Most of them simply werent. But some were, right . And a couple groups responded by taking very strong stance ds against modernity. So, looking at them helps us set up the other end of that cultural, social, political spectrum of the day. I will look at two here quickly. First, in the early 1900s, a wealthy Southern California oil millionaire, a man by the name of lyman stewart, becoming more and more convinced that his traditional view of christianity was under attack, paid for the writing and publication of some 12 volumes defending the christian faith, some 90 essays on the christian faith. Written by ministers, scholars theologians and so on. These volumes were rolled out between 1910 and 1915 and they were given the title the fundamentals. The fundamentals a testimony to the truth. I think these subtitle may be as important as the title, right . A testimony to the truth. The fundamentals. The foreword to volume one explains that these volumes will be published and sent to every pastor, evangelist, missionary theological professor, theological student, sunday school superintendent, ymca and ywca secretary in the English Speaking world, so far as the addresses of all of these can be obtained. This was a man with big plans. The publishers continued the publishers believe that the time has come when a new statement of the fundamentals of christianity should be made. Keywords right there. The time has come. In light of what we have been talking about so far, yeah, that is how it seems. Now those christians who referred to the fundamentals contained in these volumes then became known as what . Fundamentalists. Thank you. Thats right. Dont overthink. Curtis law, a baptist leader, is credited with the term in the 1920s. The fundamentals asserted the authority of scripture, attacked modernism, and generally railed against various isms of the modern world and millions of copies were sent out. That is the important part. Not just that they did it, but they disseminated millions of copies. And they were part of a movement then. They were part of a movement. The 1920s, one of the leading voices of this traditional Christian Movement was a man we have talked about a number of times this semester, William Jennings bryan. William jennings bryan. Right . Bryans chapter in this story then reaches its peak during the scopes trial of 1925. But he was not alone. That is the important thing here. There are others, lots of others like William Jennings bryan, traveling the countryside during these years, talking about traditional christianity. People like billy sunday, former professional athlete turned preacher. Men like mordecai ham. In 1923, 1924, ham traveled the south, decrying the teaching of evolution in public schools. And as he did this, he also took the opportunity to take shots at other modern disciplines being taught at the modern university of the 1920s. Things like sociology. Economics. Political science. Here is one little excerpt from one of mordecai hams sermons, 1924. Here is what he said. This was delivered in North Carolina and this was aimed squarely at the university of North Carolina. You today are listening to false prophets and seeing the prophets of god slapped in the face and doing nothing. You put men in your colleges who are known to believe that christ was an illegitimate child. You wonder why russia is swept by bolshevism, why england and even your own country are swept by disruption. The day is not far distant when you will be in the grip of the red terror and your children will be taught free love by that damnable theory of evolution. As a historian, you come across these excerpts, and that is a wow moment. Wow. There is a lot going on there, isnt there . You bet there is. People like mordecai ham, billy sunday, William Jennings bryan again, like the article that connects the iww with cubism. It takes that modernist sensibility and it opens up this universe of anxieties that far outstrips the world of art. Ok, another incarnation of this defense of tradition at this time comes in 1915 with the rebirth of the ku klux klan. The ku klux klan. We have discussed the reemergence of the klan in terms of southern history as it goes through jim crow, how movies like birth of a nation meant to glorify the klan in the postwar south, but in this context we can expand the role that the ku klux klan played in american society. The story begins on thanksgiving night, 1915, on top of stone mountain, georgia. If you have ever been there, it is a tall granite peak outside atlanta. On that night a group of men , gathered, planted an American Flag and a cross, set the cross on fire. Of course they do, right . And they opened a bible to romans, chapter 12, verse 2, and proclaimed the new knights of the ku klux klan. And in romans 12 2, what do they find . Do not conform yourself to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind so you may judge what is gods will and what is good and pleasing and perfect. Do not conform yourself to this age gives us a very large hint at what drove those to join this newly reformed klan. Do not conform yourself to this age. Think of what this age represented to a lot of people. But note also in this verse, it confers upon the believer the power to determine for themselves what is gods will and what is good, pleasing, and perfect. You are armed with that, you are in pretty good shape, right . If you confer upon yourself ability to determine what is gods will i dont know about you, but i would kind of like to have that power, wouldnt you . All right, the new klan move beyond hatred and fear of africanamericans. That was a given. This new version also chafed at the increasing position in american psyche of the 19teens, 1920s of catholics, jews progressives, liberals. They oppose labor unions. They oppose socialists. They opposed feminists, they supported prohibition, they supported immigration restriction, they supported the exclusion of catholic teachers teaching in public schools. They opposed the entry of the United States into the league of nations and on and on and on. Against all of this then this new klan responded. This new klan was not only poor, white men and not at all exclusively southern. There was a strong presence in places like indiana. So, when we look at the rise of this new klan, what are we seeing . The places most likely to be hotbeds for the klan were regions that were rural and were becoming more urbanized or more connected to the industrialized national economy. This makes sense because what kind of problems from their perspective, what kind of problems would that bring . Ok . Fear of labor unrest. Immigrants. Maybe black migrations, looking for work, all of these parts of the Rural Society being brought into an industrializing society. When we study the rise of the klan during this time, we find that it caught hold in those places that were just being introduced to a more modern consumer culture. Things like movies, things like the automobile, magazines, phonographs. All of these were thought to be loosening agents in society. They all seem to be new experiences beyond the control of, say, your parents. So, in short then, anything, anything north, south, west anything that threatened the stability of an older, white dominated, maledominated, ruralbased, more isolated protestant era. The klan slogan was native white protestant supremacy. The klan got started on thanksgiving 1915, but it did not do much until after world war i, 1919, going into 1920. Suddenly membership in this new klan took off. Probably peaked around 1925 or so. The numbers are hard to say. Certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Probably approaching millions in this new klan. The question is, why then . If it started in 1915 . What took so long . I think jennifer keenes book that weve read last week gives us a good description of this mood that comes over Many Americans as the war is brought to a close. At the end of that book, she really captures this very well and there is this sense, for example, among the soldiers that that is it. Weve done it. Weve done our bit. Time to go home. Beyond the soldiers though there is this sense it is not only time to physically bring the soldiers back home, but it seemed a time for many people to rein in all of the innovations the experimentation, the reform that seem to drive the progressive era. Time to rein that back in now. A number of the books we have read this semester touch on that mood. Brands biography of wilson really gets at that toward the end, doesnt he . In this sense the rise of the klan is one part of the swing back to a more traditionalist mood in the United States. It is not a mood that comes out of nowhere, however, after world war i. It had been there in the years prior. How do we detect, how do we measure the conservative mood coming back to the United States . One very simple way. Look at the political choices americans may. The political choices made after world war i. For example, the election in 1920. The president ial election, 1920 featuring Warren Harding. The very famous quote from his campaign, 1920 well, not very famous. Return to normalcy. The return to normalcy. Whenever you read about Warren Harding granted not very often oh, yes, return to normalcy. That does capture the mood. But i also want to look at a little bit more from that speech where he used this word. This is during his campaign in 1920. Harding says americas present need is not heroics, but healing, not nostrums, but normalcy, not revolution, but restoration, not agitation, but adjustment. And it goes on. Instead of talking about normalcy, that we get. Lets also focus on the word for example, after world war i hundreds of thousands of white soldiers returned to find what they considered their jobs already filled by recent africanamerican migrants to the north. Thousands of white soldiers returned to northern cities to find the sheer number of africanamericans sharing what they considered their cities to be increased dramatically, and they didnt like it. We have covered this in loyalty in a time of trial, but we know 1919 was one of the worst years