In which John Green teaches you about various reform movements in the 19th century United States. From Utopian societies to the Second Great Awakening to the Abolition movement, American society was undergoing great changes in the first half of the 19th century. Attempts at idealized societies popped up (and universally failed) at Utopia, OH, New Harmony, IN, Modern Times, NY, and many other places around the country. These utopians had a problem with mainstream society, and their answer was to withdraw into their own little worlds. Others didn't like the society they saw and decided to try to change it. Relatively new Protestant denominations like the Methodists and Baptists reached out to "the unchurched" during the Second Great Awakening, and membership in evangelical sects of Christianity rose quickly. At the same time, Abolitionist societies were trying to free the slaves. Americans of the 19th century had looked at the world they were living in and decided to change it.

Chapters:
Introduction: Religious & Moral Reform Movements of the 19th Century
Shaker Communities
Latter Day Saints
Brook Farm
Other Utopian Communities
The 2nd Great Awakening
The Oneida Community
Values of the 2nd Great Awakening
The Temperance Movement
Asylums
Common Schools
The Abolitionist Movement
Resistance to the Abolitionist Movement
Abolitionist Writers
Mystery Document
Frederick Douglass
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the presidency of Andrew Jackson So how did a president with astoundingly bad fiscal policies end up on the $20 bill? That's a question we can't answer, but we can tell you how Jackson got to be president, and how he changed the country when he got the job. Jackson's election was more democratic than any previous presidential election. More people were able to vote, and they picked a doozie. Jackson was a well-known war hero, and he was elected over his longtime political enemy, John Quincy Adams. Once Jackson was in office, he did more to expand executive power than any of the previous occupants of the White House. He used armed troops to collect taxes, refused to enforce legislation and supreme court legislation, and hired and fired his staff based on support in elections. He was also the first president to regularly wield the presidential veto as a political tool. Was he a good president? Watch this video and draw your own conclusions.

Chapters:
Introduction: the Age of Jackson
Democracy in the United States
Economics during the Era of Good Feelings
The Monroe Doctrine
John Quincy Adams
The Missouri Compromise
Martin Van Buren, "The Little Magician", and other Presidential Nicknames
Andrew Jackson's Presidential Campaign
The Democratic Party
The Whig Party
Jackson's Tariffs
The Indian Removal Act & The Trail of Tears
American Banking Under Jackson
Mystery Document
Jackson Ends the Second U.S. Bank
Inflation and the Panic of 1837
Legacy of the Age of Jackson
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about American involvement in World War I, which at the time was called the Great War. They didn't know there was going to be a second one, though they probably should have guessed, 'cause this one didn't wrap up very neatly. So, the United States stayed out of World War I at first, because Americans were in an isolationist mood in the early 20th century. That didn't last though, as the affronts piled up and drew the US into the war. Spoiler alert: the Lusitania was sunk two years before we joined the war, so that wasn't the sole cause for our jumping in. It was part of it though, as was the Zimmerman telegram, unrestricted submarine warfare, and our affinity for the Brits. You'll learn the war's effects on the home front, some of Woodrow Wilson's XIV Points, and just how the war ended up expanding the power of the government in Americans' lives.

Chapters:
Introduction
American Involvement in WWI
The Sinking of the Lusitania
Why did the U.S. join WWI?
Mystery Document
America's Contributions to WWI
Pro-War Progressives
How WWI Expanded the U.S. Government's Power
Propaganda, Public Opinion, and the CPI
The Espionage Act of 1917
The Sedition Act
"Americanization"
Suppression of Free Speech
Positive Outcomes of WWI
The End of WWI
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about Imperialism. In the late 19th century, the great powers of Europe were running around the world obtaining colonial possessions, especially in Africa and Asia. The United States, which as a young country was especially susceptible to peer pressure, followed along and snapped up some colonies of its own. The US saw that Spain's hold on its empire was weak, and like some kind of expansionist predator, it jumped into the Cuban War for Independence and turned it into the Spanish-Cuban-Phillipino-American War, which usually just gets called the Spanish-American War. John will tell you how America turned this war into colonial possessions like Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and almost even got to keep Cuba. The US was busy in the Pacific as well, wresting control of Hawaii from the Hawaiians. All this and more in a globe-trotting, oppressing episode of Crash Course US History.

Chapters:
Introduction
New Imperialism
Economic Motivations for American Imperialism
The Panama Canal
Rising Nationalism: The Pledge of Allegiance & Flag Day
American Territorial Expansion
Imperialism in the Pacific
The Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War
Mystery Document
America Declares War
The Events of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War
American Territories Gained in the War
American Troops in China & The Philippines
The Philippine War
Puerto Rico, The Philippines, & The Foraker Act
Hawaiian Statehood
Anti-Imperialism
Supporters of Imperialism
Credits

In which John Green kicks off Crash Course US History! Why, you may ask, are we covering US History, and not more World History, or the history of some other country, or the very specific history of your home region? Well, the reasons are many. But, like it or not, the United States has probably meddled in your country to some degree in the last 236 years or so, and that means US History is relevant all over the world. In episode 1, John talks about the Native Americans who lived in what is now the US prior to European contact. This is a history class, not archaeology, so we're mainly going to cover written history. That means we start with the first sustained European settlement in North America, and that means the Spanish. The Spanish have a long history with the natives of the Americas, and not all of it was positive. The Spanish were definitely not peaceful colonizers, but what colonizers are peaceful? Colonization pretty much always results in an antagonistic relationship with the locals. John teaches you about early Spanish explorers, settlements, and what happened when they didn't get along with the indigenous people. The story of their rocky relations has been called the Black Legend. Which is not a positive legend.

Chapters:
Introduction to Crash Course US History
Native North Americans
Were Native North Americans 'Primitive?'
Native North American Populations
Life in Pre-Columbian America
Class and Society in Native American Tribes
Spanish Colonization in North America
Mystery Document
The Problem with the Black Legend
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the early days of the Civil Rights movement. By way of providing context for this, John also talks a bit about wider America in the 1950s. The 1950s are a deeply nostalgic period for many Americans, but there is more than a little idealizing going on here. The 1950s were a time of economic expansion, new technologies, and a growing middle class. America was becoming a suburban nation thanks to cookie-cutter housing developments like the Levittowns. While the white working-class saw their wages and status improve, the proverbial rising tide wasn't lifting all proverbial ships. A lot of people were excluded from the prosperity of the 1950s. Segregation in housing and education made for some serious inequality for African Americans. As a result, the Civil Rights movement was born. John will talk about the early careers of Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, and even Earl Warren. He'll teach you about Brown v Board of Education, the lesser-known Mendez vs Westminster, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and all kinds of other stuff.

Chapters:
Introduction: The 1950s
The American Suburbs
The "Era of Consensus"
Segregation
Desegregating Schools
Mystery Document
The Aftermath of Brown vs. Board of Education
Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycotts
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Little Rock Nine
The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement
Credits

In which John Green teaches you how the Civil War played a large part in making the United States the country that it is today. He covers some of the key ways in which Abraham Lincoln influenced the outcome of the war, and how the lack of foreign intervention also helped the Union win the war. John also covers the technology that made the Civil War different than previous wars. New weapons helped to influence the outcomes of battles, but photography influenced how the public at large perceived the war. In addition, John gets into the long-term effects of the war, including the federalization and unification of the United States. All this plus homesteading, land grant universities, railroads, federal currency, and taxes.

Chapters:
Introduction
Did Lincoln Free the Slaves?
How Some Slaves Freed Themselves
Why Lincoln Signed the Emancipation Proclamation
The Gettysburg Address
The First Modern War
Mystery Document
Matthew Brady - Civil War Photographer
A New Nation
The Homestead Act, Morrill Land Grant Act, and Pacific Railway Act
Financing the Civil War
Post-War Industrialization
Credits

In which John Green ACTUALLY teaches about the Civil War. In part one of our two-part look at the US Civil War, John looks into the causes of the war, and the motivations of the individuals who went to war. The overarching causes and the individual motivations were not always the same, you see. John also looks into why the North won, and whether that outcome was inevitable. The North's industrial and population advantages are examined, as are the problems of the Confederacy, including its need to build a nation at the same time it was fighting a war. As usual, John doesn't get much into the actual battle-by-battle breakdown. He does talk a little about the overarching strategy that won the war, and Grant's plan to just overwhelm the South with numbers. Grant took a lot of losses in the latter days of the war, but in the end, it did lead to the surrender of the South.

Chapters:
Introduction
Basic Facts of the Civil War
Free and Slave States
Causes of the Civil War
Religion and the Civil War
Union Advantages in the Civil War
Confederate Advantages in the Civil War
Was the Union's Victory Inevitable?
Mystery Document
Ulysses S. Grant
Union Weaknesses in the Civil War
Turning Points in the Civil War
Lincoln's Reelection
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the United States as it was in the 1990s. You'll remember from last week that the old-school Republican George H.W. Bush had lost the 1992 presidential election to a young upstart Democrat from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. Clinton was a bit of a dark horse candidate, having survived a sex scandal during the election, but a third-party run by Ross Perot split the vote, and Clinton was inaugurated in 1993. John will teach you about Clinton's foreign policy agenda, which included NATO action in the Balkans and the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. He'll also cover some of the domestic successes and failures of the Clinton years, including the failed attempt at healthcare reform, the pretty terrible record on GLBTQ issues, Welfare reform, which got mixed reviews, and the happier issues like the huge improvements in the economy. Also computers. Cheap, effective, readily available computers came along in the 1990s, and they kind of changed the world, culminating in this video, which is the end of the internet. Until next week.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Clinton Years
Clinton's Foreign Policy
Terrorism During the Clinton Era
Clinton's Domestic Policy
Clinton's Triangulation Strategy
Clinton's Welfare Reforms
Economics During the Clinton Era
The E-Commerce Boom
Mystery Document
Globalization of Manufacturing, Technology, and Commerce
The Crash of 2000
Increasing Wealth Inequality
The Culture Wars
An Influx of Immigration
Diverse Family Structures
The AIDS Epidemic & LGBT Rights Movement
Imprisonment & the "War on Drugs"
Multiculturalism & Political Tensions
Clinton's Infidelity & Impeachment
Clinton's Legacy
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, the decades-long conflict between the USA and the USSR. The Cold War was called cold because of the lack of actual fighting, but this is inaccurate. There was plenty of fighting, from Korea to Viet Nam to Afghanistan, but we'll get into that stuff next week. This week we'll talk about how the Cold War started. In short, it grew out of World War II. Basically, the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe and the US-supported western Europe. This setup would spill across the world, with client states on both sides. It's all in the video. You should just watch it.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Cold War Era
The Aftermath of WWII
USSR Expansion & Containment
The Truman Doctrine
The Marshall Plan
The Berlin Crisis
Mystery Document
Consensus on Cold War Policies
Impact of the Cold War on Domestic Policy
Espionage, McCarthyism, and the Red Scare
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War as it unfolded in Asia. As John pointed out last week, the Cold War was occasionally hot, and a lot of that heat was generated in Asia. This is starting to sound weird with the hot/cold thing, so let's just say that the United States' struggle against communist expansion escalated to a full-blown, boots-on-the-ground war in Korea and Vietnam. In both of these cases, the United States sent soldiers to intervene in civil wars that it looked like communists might win. That's a bit of a simplification, but John will explain it all to you.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Cold War in Asia
The Korean War
Eisenhower's Election
Cost of the Korean War
Mystery Document
Ho Chi Minh
American Involvement in Vietnam
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
Operation Rolling Thunder
Fighting in Vietnam
Public Opinion and the Vietnam War
Nixon's Plan to Leave Vietnam
Anti-War Sentiments
The End of the Vietnam War
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the election of 1860. As you may remember from last week, things were not great at this time in US history. The tensions between the North and South were rising, ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. The North wanted to abolish slavery, and the South wanted to continue with it. It seemed like a war was inevitable, and it turns out that it was. But first, the nation had to get through this election. You'll learn how the bloodshed in Kansas and the truly awful Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the decrease in popularity of Stephen Douglas, the splitting of the Democratic party, and the unlikely victory of a relatively inexperienced politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's election would lead directly to the secession of several southern states, and thus to the Civil War. John will teach you about all this, plus Dred Scott, Roger Taney, and John Brown.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Civil War
The Fugitive Slave Law
Railroads
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
How the Republican Party Formed
Public Opinion on Free vs. Slave States
The New Republican Party Gains Traction
How Kansas Became a State
The Dred Scott Decision
Mystery Document
John Brown & Harpers Ferry
The Election of 1860
The Start of the Civil War
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Gilded Age and its politics. What, you may ask, is the Gilded Age? The term comes from a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner titled, "The Gilded Age." You may see a pattern emerging here. It started in the 1870s and continued on until the turn of the 20th century. The era is called Gilded because of the massive inequality that existed in the United States. Gilded Age politics were marked by a number of phenomena, most of them having to do with corruption. On the local and state level, political machines wielded enormous power. John gets into details about the most famous political machine, Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ran New York City for a long, long time, notably under Boss Tweed. Graft, kickbacks, and voter fraud were rampant, but not just at the local level. Ulysses S. Grant ran one of the most scandalous presidential administrations in U.S. history, and John will tell you about two of the best-known scandals, the Credit Mobilier scandal, and the Whiskey Ring. There were a few attempts at reform during this time, notably the Civil Service Act of 1883 and the Sherman Anti-trust act of 1890. John will also get into the Grange Movement of the western farmers, and the Populist Party that arose from that movement. The Populists, who threw in their lot with William Jennings Bryan, never managed to get it together and win a presidency, and they faded after 1896. This brings us to the Progressive Era, which we'll get into in the next episode!

Chapters:
Introduction: The Gilded Age
The Political Machine
Mystery Document
"Boss" Tweed & the County Courthouse
Tammany Politicians
Credit Mobilier & Bribing Congress
The Whiskey Ring
Gilded Age Republicans
The Civil Service Act & the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Local Government Reforms
The Farmers' Alliance
The People's (Populist) Party
Populist Leaders
William Jennings Bryan's Presidential Campaign
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Great Depression. So, everybody knows that the Great Depression started with the stock market crash in 1929, right? Not exactly. The Depression happened after the stock market crash, but wasn't caused by the crash. John will teach you about how the depression started, what Herbert Hoover tried to do to fix it, and why those efforts failed.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Great Depression
Causes of the Great Depression
The Stock Market Crash
The Failures of America's Banking System
The Hoover Administration's Responses to the Great Depression
WWI's Global Economic Impact
Hoover and The Gold Standard
What Hoover did (and didn't) do about the Great Depression
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Impact of the Great Depression
Mystery Document
Accounts of the Great Depression
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the massive immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Immigrants flocked to the US from all over the world in this time period. Millions of Europeans moved to the US where they drove the growth of cities and manned the rapid industrialization that was taking place. In the western US many, many Chinese immigrants arrived to work on the railroad and in mines. As is often the case in the United States, the people who already lived in the US reacted kind of badly to this flood of immigrants. Some legislators tried to stem the flow of new arrivals, with mixed success. Grover Cleveland vetoed a general ban on immigration, but the leadership at the time did manage to get together to pass an anti-Chinese immigration law. Immigrants did win some important Supreme Court decisions upholding their rights, but in many ways, immigrants were treated as second-class citizens. At the same time, the country was rapidly urbanizing. Cities were growing rapidly and industrial technology was developing new wonders all the time. John will cover all this upheaval and change, and hearken back to a time when racial profiling did in fact boil down to analyzing the side of someone's face.

Chapters:
Introduction
The Agricultural Golden Age
Americans Move to Cities
New York City & Chicago
The Rise of Immigration
Immigrant Cities
Southern & Eastern European Immigrants
Chinese Immigrants
Mass Immigration: A Global Phenomenon
Mystery Document
Why Did Immigrants Come to America?
Living Conditions in Immigrant Cities
Wealth Segregation
Credits

In which John Green teaches you a bit about the 4th of July. In this special short Crash Course, John celebrates American Independence Day by teaching you how the holiday came to be on the 4th of July, and the many ways that Americans celebrate the day. This is a little different than the normal Crash Course episode, so be prepared.

Chapters:
Introduction
The Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
How Americans Celebrate Independence Day
July 4: When Presidents Die
Americans Love Eating!
Happy Fourth of July from Crash Course!
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Industrial Economy that arose in the United States after the Civil War. You know how when you're studying history, and you're reading along and everything seems safely in the past, and then BOOM you think, "Man, this suddenly seems very modern." For me, that moment in US History is the post-Reconstruction expansion of industrialism in America. After the Civil War, many of the changes in technology and ideas gave rise to this new industrialism. You'll learn about the rise of Captains of Industry (or Robber Barons) like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, and JP Morgan. You'll learn about trusts, combinations, and how the government responded to these new business practices. All this, plus John will cover how workers reacted to the changes in society and the early days of the labor movement. You'll learn about the Knights of Labor and Terence Powderly, as well as Samuel Gompers and the AFL.

Chapters:
Introduction: American Industrialization
Geography, Demography, and Law
Geography & Resources
America's Changing Demographics
Laws & Economics
Changes in the American Workforce
How Railroads Impacted the Economy
Mystery Document
Robber Barrons
Cornelius Vanderbilt
John D. Rockefeller
Vertical Integration
Horizontal Integration
J.P. Morgan
Industrial Workers
The Knights of Labor
The American Federation of Labor
Social Darwinism
Organized Labor Uprisings
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the Market Revolution. In the first half of the 19th century, the way people lived and worked in the United States changed drastically. At play was the classic (if anything in a 30-year-old nation can be called classic) American struggle between the Jeffersonian ideal of individuals sustaining themselves on small farms vs. the Hamiltonian vision of an economy based on manufacturing and trade. I'll give you one guess who won. Too late! It was Hamilton, which is why if you live in the United States, you probably live in a city and are unlikely to be a farmer. Please resist the urge to comment about this if you live in the country and/or are a farmer. Your anecdotal experience doesn't change the fact that most people live in cities. In the early 19th century, new technologies in transportation and communication helped remake the economic system of the country. Railroads and telegraphs changed the way people moved goods and information around. The long and short of it is, the Market Revolution meant that people now went somewhere to work rather than working at home. Often, that somewhere was a factory where they worked for an hourly wage rather than getting paid for the volume of goods they manufactured. This shift in the way people work has repercussions in our daily lives right down to today. Watch as John teaches you how the Market Revolution sowed the seeds of change in the way Americans thought about the roles of women, slavery, and labor rights. Also, check out high school John wearing his Academic Decathalon medals.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Market Revolution
The Era of Good Feelings
New technology in transportation
Steamboats and canals
Railroads & telegraphs
Factories & interchangeable parts
The rise of modern banking
Encouraging Competition
Work & life during the Market Revolution
Westward expansion & "Manifest Destiny"
Mystery Document
Transcendentalists
Wealth disparities after the Market Revolution
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about relations between the early English colonists and the Native people they encountered in the New World. In short, these relations were poor. As soon as they arrived, the English were in conflict with the native people. At Jamestown, Captain John Smith briefly managed to get the colony on pretty solid footing with the local tribes, but it didn't last, and a long series of wars with the natives ensued. This pattern would continue in US history, with settlers pushing into native lands and pushing the inhabitants further west. In this episode, you'll learn about Wahunsunacawh (who the English called Powhatan), his daughter Pocahontas, King Philip's (aka Metacom) War, and the Mystic Massacre. By and large, the history of the Natives and the English was not a happy one, even Thanksgiving wasn't all it's cracked up to be.

Chapters:
Introduction
Native Americans' Relationship to English Settlers
Trade Between Europeans and Natives
Pochahontas
Conflict, Uprisings, and the Failure of the Virginia Company
The Puritans' Relationship with Native Americans
The Pequot War
King Phillip's War
Mystery Document
How Native Americans Resisted Colonization
Credits

In which John Green teaches you about the New Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to pull the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Did it work? Maybe. John will teach you about some of the most effective and some of the best-known programs of the New Deal. They weren't always the same thing. John will tell you who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it. He'll also get into how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and citizens, and will even reveal just how the Depression ended. (hint: it was war spending)

Chapters:
Introduction: The New Deal
The New Deal
FDR's Election
The 3 R's of the New Deal
The First New Deal
The National Industrial Recovery Act
The Tennessee Valley Authority
The Agricultural Adjustment Act
Supreme Court Interventions
FDR's Court Packing Controversy
The Second New Deal
The Wagner Act & the National Labor Relations Board
Mystery Document
CIO Unions
The Social Security Act
The Works Progress Administration
Political Party Alignments in the New Deal Era
Did the New Deal end the Great Depression?
Legacy of the New Deal
Credits