Essential Question

Essential Question

• What was the impact of WWI on the United States?

Government Bonds

• Liberty Bonds

• Victory Bonds

• Americans loaned the government money, to be repaid with interest

Female Employment

• Increased opportunities for women to fill industrial jobs left open by men serving in the military

The Great Migration

• Thousands of African Americans left the South for northern cities and factory jobs

• Chicago, NYC, Detroit, Cleveland

Espionage Act of 1917

• Penalties and prison terms for anyone helping the enemy

• Espionage = spying to acquire secret government information

Sedition Act of 1918

• Any public expression of opposition to the war was made illegal

Schenck vs. the United States (1919)

• Supreme Court ruled that an individual’s freedom of speech could be curbed when the words are a “clear and present danger”

Schenck vs. the United States (1919)

“When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as [soldiers] fight.”

American Troops

• Aided the French in stopping German attack

• Began to push Germans back

Signing the Armistice

• Nov. 11, 1918

• Germany signed an armistice (ceasefire) to end the war

Wilson’s Plan for Peace

• Peace conference met in 1919

• U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy

• Wilson offered his plan

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

• Attempted to eliminate causes of war

• Right of self-determination

• Creation of the League of Nations

League of Nations

• Member nations would help preserve peace and prevent future wars

Treaty of Versailles

• Harsh terms for Germany

• Germany must remove armed forces and pay war damages ($33 billion) to the Allies

U.S. Response

• Little support for Wilson’s League of Nations

• Congress did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles

Wilson’s Decline

• Traveled throughout the U.S. to speak in support of his plan

• Collapsed in Colorado in Sept. 1919, suffered a stroke