10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

In Chapter 4, Gillon examines the crucial and bloody Battle of Antietam during the Civil War. The Confederacy had scored a decisive victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, so “by the fall of 1862, it appeared that the South was on the verge of victory in the Civil War” (80). Knowing that the North had a tremendous advantage in resources thanks to its size and industrial economy, General Robert E. Lee hoped that President Abraham Lincoln would call for peace and send Union troops home if the Confederate forces continued to win early battles. Lee marched his forces north into Maryland, hoping to control the border state and trap the Union capital of Washington DC inside the Confederacy. The battle that took place at Antietam was crucial not only because it could have decided the war in the South’s favor, but also because England and France were on the verge of recognizing and aiding the Confederacy for its cotton exports.

The battle began at dawn, and “by 9 A.M. more than 8,000 Americans had been killed or injured—and the fighting had only just begun” (90). Throughout the daylong battle, 2,108 Union soldiers were killed and between 1,546 and 2,700 Confederates died, while between 17,301 and 18,573 other men were wounded. Gillon explains that “more men lost their lives at Antietam than in all the wars the nation fought in the nineteenth century” (93). Confederate forces were defeated at Antietam turning the tide of the war in the North’s favor, but notoriously cautious General George B. McClellan failed to deploy his reserve troops to deliver the crushing blow that could have destroyed the rebel army and ended the war.

Gillon argues that the battle led directly to Lincoln issuing his Emancipation Proclamation, which legally freed three million enslaved people in Confederate states. Lincoln had wanted to issue it earlier but was warned that it should be done only after a key Union victory. The document “transformed the war to preserve the Union into a struggle over the meaning of freedom” (95).

Homestead Steel Works, located six miles outside of Pittsburgh, was the “crown jewel in Andrew Carnegie’s vast steel manufacturing empire,” Carnegie Steel Company (103). In 1892, the plant became the site of a bloody confrontation between striking steel workers and Pinkerton agents hired to put down the strike and bust the union. The union representing the strikers was the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, which Gillon describes as “the most powerful craft union in the country at the end of the nineteenth century” (104). Although Carnegie had presented himself as a friend to organized labor in the past, the strength of Amalgamated concerned him and he knew that the union would have to be dealt with to cut his labor costs and maximize profits. Carnegie’s plant manager, Henry Clay Frick, announced in June that the union would no longer be recognized at the plant. Frick then installed a fence topped with barbed wire around the plant and closed the plant down, shutting out 3,800 workers, who would now need individual contracts with the company to get their jobs back.

When 300 Pinkerton agents attempted to enter the town on heavily armed barges in the Monongahela River on July 6, 1892, thousands of plant workers and townspeople were there to prevent them from gaining control of the mill. Three Pinkertons and seven plant workers died before the agents on the barges finally surrendered. Gillon argues that “Homestead workers had articulated an alternate vision of democracy” (110). However, community control of the factory was short lived. Only a few days later, Governor Robert E. Pattison ordered 8,000 members of the state militia to Homestead with the stated purpose of breaking the strike and protecting “the property rights of the Carnegie Corporation” (119). Three days after the arrival of the militia, the plant was operating again with replacement workers. Gillon argues that “the state’s response to Homestead clearly established that Carnegie’s rights outweighed the general rights of any residents of Homestead. Any hope of creating a working-class democracy in America died on that bloody July day in Pennsylvania” (124).

When William McKinley became president in 1897, the United States was undergoing massive changes. As Gillon explains, “it was an America in transition from a rural, agricultural past to an urban, industrial future” (126). Over the previous 30 years, nearly 14 million immigrants had come to America; its urban population grew from 14 million to 42 million. In early September, McKinley attended the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York—a World’s Fair event designed to celebrate the nation’s technological prowess. While attending an event, McKinley was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, an unemployed steelworker and avowed anarchist. Although doctors were confident in McKinley’s recovery, his wounds became infected, and he died just over a week later. Czolgosz was quickly convicted and executed. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumed the Office of President on September 14, 1901. Gillon argues that “Teddy Roosevelt’s accidental presidency, made possible by an assassin’s bullet, profoundly changed the course of the century” (137).

While McKinley was a staunch conservative, Roosevelt had become known as a progressive reformer during his time as governor of New York, when he “angered party bosses with his public criticism of powerful trusts and his strong support of land conservation” (138). As president, Roosevelt continued his progressive agenda. As a “trustbuster,” he took on corporate consolidation by employing the Sherman Antitrust Act to prosecute some of the largest corporations in the country25 times. After winning a second term in 1904, Roosevelt oversaw the passage of the Hepburn Act to regulate shipping rates, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and the Meat Inspection Act; he also added 150 million acres of undeveloped land to national forests in the Western United States. Gillon argues that “by expanding the power of the presidency and the national government, Roosevelt foreshadowed both the New Deal and the Great Society, making clear that the era of big government had begun” (144-45).