After McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York while attending the World Fair being held there, Vice-President Roosevelt became President. He had been Commissioner of Police of New York City and then Governor of New York. By force of personality and intelligence, Roosevelt created the modern, powerful American presidency. In the 19th Century, the Presidency was rather weak and the Congress was the dominant branch of government. He used his knowledge of patronage to beat the party bosses at their own game. Roosevelt moved against some of the most powerful business leaders of his day. Among those who he attacked were Morgan and Rockefellar. He determined that no centers of economic power should be stronger than the US government and that big business should be run in the public interest.
He inaugurated a policy of national parks and national forests. He promoted the conservation of natural resources. He reformed and cleaned up the federal bureaucracy. He conducted a vigorous foreign policy that was much more imperialistic and interventionist than any previous government in the history of the United States. Perhaps most importantly, he transformed the expectations of the American public about the kind of office to expect in the Presidency and laid the groundwork for the unprecedented four term presidency of his younger cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt thirty years later.
Wilson was the President of Princeton University and the reforming governor of the State of New Jersey before running for the Presidency on the Democratic Ticket. Theodore Roosevelt had split the Republican Party with President Howard Taft and, as a result, Wilson won with a plurality of the vote. Wilson thought that the President should lead the Congress in passing legislation in a manner similar to the Prime Minister in the British Parliament. He was antagonistic towards big business but, once in office, he pursued a policy of moderate regulation rather than an all out assault. In some respects, Wilson's views were retrograde. For example, he reinstated racial segregation in the civil service and opposed female suffrage.
Even though Wilson saw his real goals for his administration in domestic reforms, he won reelection in 1916 on the slogan "He kept us out of war!" However, the very next April, 1917, he took the country into war with Germany. These events displayed two characteristics of progressive governments, i.e. domestic reform and foreign interventionism. Eventually, they were to come to a calamitous end in the Vietnam War. Progressive politics became know by the 1930's as liberalism primarily because they sought reform in the economic sphere as had liberalism sought political reform in the nineteenth century. Ironically, political liberalism of the nineteenth century was economically very conservative.
Following the conquest of French Canada in 1763, all of the country came under the authority of the crown. The Quebec Act of 1774 had recognized the Catholic Church and made it the established church in Quebec. During the American Revolution, thirty thousand loyalists fled to Ontario and established a much stronger British presence in Canada. They were strongly loyal to the Crown. Tension between the French and English populations began shortly thereafter and this tension led to the Constitutional Act of 1791. The Act divided the country into Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada as separately administered provinces that reported to a Governor-General of Canada who was appointed by the King of the United Kingdom. In the 1830's tension developed between the settled families who ran the country and new settlers who hoped to establish prosperity for themselves. In 1837, rebellions occurred in both Upper and Lower Canada. Hoping the avoid another North American revolution, the liberal government following the first Reform Act in 1832, the Britains sent the Earl of Durham with extensive powers to make reforms. He suggested and the Parliament adopted the Canada Act of 1840 that gave the country a single, national legislature composed of two houses. The national legislature took responsibility for the domestic management of the country. Durham's reforms were copied extensively in the other parts of the British Empire in which there were large numbers of Englishmen (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa).
On the whole, it was a much more conservative society socially and economically until the last thirty years or so. The conflict between the Francophone and Anglophone populations continued up until the present day. Over time, the Canadian economy became very integrated with and tied to the American economy. The Canadian, however, gradually evolved a distinctive culture and way of doing things.
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