The Legislative Branch
Legislative Landmarks that Shaped U.S. History
 

Congress isn’t always mired in gridlock, squabbling, and scandal.  Crises such as the looming Civil War, the Great Depression, and the civil rights movement have sparked “the people’s representatives” to pass some of the nation’s boldest legislation.  Whether products of bipartisan cooperation or bitter struggle, these then acts of Congress have built America.  ..

LOUISIANA PURCHASE (1803) 

With the American landgrab of the nineteenth century under way, President Thomas Jefferson hoped to purchase from France nearly 830,000 square miles between the Mississippi and the the Rockies for $15 million.  That’s about three cents an acre.  A constitutional provision might have barred the federal government from buying foreign territory, but the Senate, accepting Jefferson’s broad interpretation of the provision, approved the purchase.  The House appropriated the money to consummate the deal.  On December 20, 1803, the U.S. took possession of North America’s heartland, doubling the nation’s size with territory that would comprise 13 states.  The purchase allowed settlement westward and tapped natural resources that would help the U.S. emerge as a world power.

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (1854)  http://teachingamericanhistory.org/static/neh/interactives/sectionalism/lesson3/

Should slavery be extended into the United States’ new territories Kansas and Nebraska?  The Kansas-Nebraska Act turned the question over to popular vote.  When the act passed, thousands of settlers from both sides of the issue flooded Kansas, the territory where slavery status was most in question.  by October 1856, 200 people had died during fighting in “bleeding Kansas.”  The battle hardened North-South divisions and made civil war all but inevitable.  But in the long run, the act forced the nation to address the poisonous legacy of one race enslaving another. 

HOMESTEAD ACT (1862) 

The Civil War–era legislation allowed any family head or adult male to claim 160 acres of prairie land for a $10 registration fee and a promise to live there continuously for five years.  It opened up 83 million acres for immediate settlement and added 15 million acres later.  Between 1863 and 1880, over half of the 242,000 new farms in Minnesota, the Dakota Territory, Nebraska, and Kansas were homesteading ventures.  The act drew thousands of English, Irish, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and Czechs to the U.S., pushing settlement farther west

SOCIAL SECURITY ACT (1935)

The act was designed to secure “the men, women, and children of the nation against certain hazards and vicissitudes of life,” explained President Franklin Roosevelt.  The act’s best-known measure is the social insurance system that provides monthly checks to the elderly.  The government issued the first Social Security check on January 31, 1940, to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54.  Since then, Uncle Sam has paid out over $4 trillion, and in 1997, one in seven Americans received Social Security benefits.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT (1935)

In the 1930s, a steelworker needed to labor for an hour and a half to earn enough money to purchase a dozen eggs.  Today, an average union worker can pay for the eggs after seven minutes on the job.  By declaring that workers had a right to join unions and bargain collectively with employers for pay raises, the act is responsible for this increased purchasing power.  Labor’s Magna Carta also provided workers with the legal weapons to improve plant conditions and protect themselves from employer harassment. 

LEND-LEASE ACT (1941)

A  program under which the United States supplied Great Britain, the USSR ,France, the Republic of China, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and August 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939 and nine months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941.

G.I. BILL OF RIGHTS (1944)

What do Gerald Ford, George Bush, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, David Brinkley, and Jason Robards have in common?  They all benefited from the G.I. Bill of Rights, known officially as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944.  The law, which was later amended to include all veterans, originally guaranteed a year of college or trade education to ex-World War II servicemen with at least 90 days in the armed forces.  It also mandated that they receive up to $500 a year for tuition, books, and supplies. Of the nearly 8 million veterans who took advantage of this first G.I. bill, 450,000 became engineers, 240,000 accountants, 238,000 teachers, 67,000 doctors, and 22,000 dentists, while thousands more chose other professional careers.  Veterans also made use of the bill’s guaranteed mortgages and low interest rates to buy new homes in the suburbs, kicking off a development boom.

TRUMAN DOCTRINE (1947)

As a result of growing tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union after World War II, the Truman Doctrine called for $400 million in U.S. aid for Greece and Turkey to loosen the communist grip on those countries and to promote democracy and capitalism.  But the legislation’s key significance lay in the language that President Harry Truman used to sway Congress to pass the bill.  Convinced by advisers that he needed to build support by “scaring the hell out of the country,” Truman declared to a joint session of Congress, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”  Truman’s rhetoric transformed the Cold War into a moral conflict in which any change in the international political climate was perceived as a threat to U.S. interests.  The country became locked in an arms race; anti-communist hysteria ensued and gave ammunition to demagogues like Joseph McCarthy.  But there is also the argument (most often put forth by conservatives) that the Truman Doctrine presaged U.S. victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. 

FEDERAL HIGHWAY ACT (1956)

“More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America,” said President Eisenhower, years later, about his administration’s biggest achievement.  One of the most expensive public-works projects in U.S. history, the highway act allocated more than $30 billion for a 41,000-mile nationwide interstate-highway system.  Paved highways gave birth to America’s car culture and to roadside businesses such as truck stops, fast-food restaurants, and suburban shopping malls.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

President Lyndon Johnson said the Civil Rights Act was necessary to “eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.”  Injustice endures, but the end of segregated lunch counters, theaters, and drinking fountains went a long way toward addressing the oppression of African-Americans and women. By allowing African-Americans new opportunities, the legislation cleared the way for a black middle class.  By 1972, 44 percent of black children in the South attended integrated schools.  The act also changed attitudes:  In 1958, 28 percent of southern whites agreed that black and white children should attend the same schools.  By 1980, that number had grown to 95 percent.  In addition, Title VII of the act prohibits gender discrimination and served as the legal bulwark for the women’s liberation movement.

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

It is fitting that President Johnson signed the act in the same room in the Capitol where Abraham Lincoln had penned the Emancipation Proclamation.  This legislation guaranteed all Americans the most fundamental of all rights:  the right to vote.The impact was swift and profound.  Between the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections, black voter registration increased by 50 percent across the nation, even in the reluctant southern states.  In Mississippi, for example, 60 percent of eligible black residents registered to vote.  Since 1965, the number of African-Americans elected to office has soared from fewer than 280 to more than 8,200, giving black newfound political clout.