[Detail] Hezekiah J. Crumpton and Washington B. Crumpton.

Expansion, Exploration, and Movement (1880-1920)

The decades following the Civil War were ones of unprecedented growth for the United States. The West was settled and the last free Native American tribes were exterminated or tamed and sequestered to reservations. Industrialization, which took a firm hold of the North, crept into the South as urban centers such as Atlanta and New Orleans sought to keep up with national production trends. Transcontinental railroads were built and new technologies made large-scale farming in the West a reality. Also, during these years, the United States broke from its isolationism to fight in two foreign wars. In all this, southerners played a part, and several documents from this collection relate individual experiences with these momentous forces of change.

The Spanish-American War is perhaps best remembered as the event that made Teddy Roosevelt a hero and catapulted him into public office. The war also made a big impression on Kentuckian Fess Whitaker who, though having won the office of jailer in his native Letcher County in the later years of his life, chose to entitle his memoirs History of Corporal Fess Whitaker to reflect his army rank during the war.A search on Spanish-American War directs the reader to Whitaker's document, in which the author humorously recounts his first meeting with Roosevelt:

After I spent thirteen days with my mother I slipped off and walked to Jackson, Ky., a distance of sixty-five miles, and enlisted for two years and was sent to Cuba and was signed to Col. Teddy Roosevelt's brigade. That was where Teddy and I first met. He soon took a liking to me, and after the Battle of Santiago Teddy, without a wound and I with a bullet wound in my left arm, took me by the hand and said: "Fess, we have gained a great battle for our country. You or I will be the next President of the United States, and if you get the nomination I am for you, and if I get the nomination I want you to be for me, for you have a great influence in the United States." We shook hands and parted. So Teddy was from the North and had more votes than the South and beat me to the nomination. But I was for him and am still for him.

Page 41, History of Corporal Fess Whitaker

• Do you believe Whitaker's story? What does it reveal about him?
• How would an early twentieth-century audience have reacted to this passage?
• What role does humor play in Whitaker's description?
• Would the above statement have helped or hurt an aspiring politician?

The First World War had been raging for several years before the United States entered the conflict in 1917. Although Woodrow Wilson had won the presidency with the slogan, "He kept us out of war," Americans rallied when Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and supported a U.S. declaration of war soon after. African Americans served in the U.S. Army in France and African-American leaders used this fact to support the claim that their race was a fully integrated, beneficial component of American culture. The principal of the Talladega School, Robert Russa Moton, was appointed by a presidential commission to study the conduct of black soldiers and, in that capacity, visited France. In his autobiography Finding a Way Out, Moton relates:

While in France, I visited nearly every point where Negro soldiers were stationed. At most of them I spoke to the men, and at each place I was most cordially welcomed by the officers and men. I also had the privilege of conferring with Col. E. M. House; Bishop Brent, senior chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces; General Pershing, and many other high officials of the American and French governments, all of whom I consulted with reference to the record which had been made by Negro troops, and received only words of very highest praise and commendation on their character and conduct in all branches of the service.

Page 251, Finding a Way Out

• Do Moton's claims seem credible?
• What biases might the author have had?
• How would other African-American leaders have benefitted from Moton's conclusions?
• Is it necessary to serve in a war to establish loyalty? What stake did African Americans have in World War I?

Several documents in First Person Narratives of the American South pay witness to the consolidation of a national system of railroads, the introduction of science and technology to everyday life, and the ideological struggle between the tenants of natural history and creationism. A search on evolution directs the reader to the Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte, an eminent scientist, travel writer, and natural historian.

A search on railroads yields The Last Flag of Truce, Dallas T. Ward's brief, but touching, account of commanding the train that delivered a flag of truce to General Sherman, preventing the destruction of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Readers will also find Fess Whitaker's (see above) account of railroad service in Texas just after the turn of the century informative as to the operation, opportunities, and dangers of early rail travel. A comparison of John A. Wyeth's account of his education as a surgeon in the Union Army and African-American physician Thomas William Burton's What Experience Has Taught Me offers an opportunity to study the evolution of medicine during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

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