10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

The ACLU was founded in 1920 as an organization “fighting to protect the right of pacifists from serving in World War I” (155). According to Gillon, the organization later “expanded its agenda to address the broad concerns of preserving minority rights from majority power” (155). When Tennessee passed the Butler Act in 1925, which barred educators from teaching “any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of Man as taught in the Bible” (154), the ACLU sought out a volunteer teacher to challenge the law in court, leading to the famous Scopes trial.

Approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777, the Articles of Confederation served as the first frame of government for the United States. Gillon argues that the Articles were dysfunctional because “the central government lacked the power to regulate trade or collect taxes” (33). Instead, “each state was responsible for developing its own plan for paying back the staggering Revolutionary War debt” (33). The Shays’ Rebellion of 1787 led directly to the Articles of Confederation being replaced by the Constitution.

Passed in 1925, the Butler Act was a Tennessee law that barred the teaching of “any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of Man as taught in the Bible, and [holds] instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals” (154). The Butler Act was challenged by the ACLU and high school teacher John Scopes in the famous Scopes trial.

This executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln changed the legal status of enslaved people in Confederate states, freeing them. Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam. According to Gillon, Lincoln had wanted to issue it earlier, but was advised to wait until after a major Union victory in the Civil War. Gillon argues that “the Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war to preserve the Union into a struggle over the meaning of freedom” (95).

The scramble for gold in California took place in the late 1840s after deposits of the valuable metal was found at Sutter’s Mill. The discovery led to an onrush of miners from all over the world. Their enthusiasm was nicknamed gold fever, “since many observers thought of it as a contagious disease” (63).

The Manhattan Project was the military code name of the US program to produce nuclear weapons, a “nationwide network of research labs, factories, and military bases” (189). Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II, the project accelerated its timeframe to beat Germany to developing an atom bomb. The project was under the direction of General Leslie Groves, who placed physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in charge of traveling the country to recruit a team of scientists to contribute.

The Pequot were a Native American tribe active in Connecticut when the Puritans arrived from England in 1630. The Pequot, who depended on farming, hunting, and fishing for survival, “managed to establish military dominance over the other tribes in New England” (12-13). Once numbering 13,000, the tribe dwindled to 3,000 by 1634 because of diseases carried by English settlers. The Pequot War with Puritan settlers lasted from 1634 to 1638, decimating the Pequot population.

Progressives were members of a political movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries “shared a moralistic view of the world, which saw political issues as a clash between right and wrong, and an agenda for using the government to rein in the trusts and empower people” (140). Progressives like President Theodore Roosevelt used government policies to deal with problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Roosevelt’s predecessor, William McKinley, was staunchly conservative, but when Roosevelt assumed the presidency, he acted as a true Progressive reformer.

The Puritans were a Protestant sect who disliked the Church of England’s ties to Roman Catholicism. Seeking to worship differently, 600 Puritan settlers migrated from England to North America, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in June 1630. Gillon explains that “the Puritan mission was to tame the wilderness so their commonwealth would shine like a beacon back to immoral England” (10). The Puritans viewed themselves as God’s chosen people and viewed Native peoples of the region as “dangerous, temporary obstacles to permanent English settlement in New England” (11). As the Puritan settlers took over more land, Native tribes resisted their expansion, leading to the Pequot War, which lasted from 1634 to 1638.

Gillon describes this genre of music as a mix of rhythm and blues, country, and white gospel music. It became popular with African Americans and was initially known by white people as “race music.” In 1951, disc jockey Alan Freed renamed the genre rock and roll, “an urban euphemism for dancing and sex” (207). Gillon explains that by 1955, “twelve of the year’s top fifty songs were rock and roll” (207).