PBS American Experience

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during what has become known as the Gilded Age, the population of the United States doubled in the span of a single generation. The nation became the world’s leading producer of food, coal, oil, and steel, attracted vast amounts of foreign investment, and pushed into markets in Europe and the Far East. As national wealth expanded, two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life. These disparities sparked passionate and violent debate over questions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best distributed, and by what process? Does government exist to protect private property or provide balm to the inevitable casualties of a churning industrial system? Should the government concern itself chiefly with economic growth or economic justice? The battles over these questions were fought in Congress, the courts, the polling place, the workplace and the streets. The outcome of these disputes was both uncertain and momentous, and marked by a passionate vitriol and level of violence that would shock the conscience of many Americans today. The Gilded Age presents a compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history.

On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world’s two largest oceans and signaling America’s emergence as a global superpower. American ingenuity and innovation had succeeded where, fifteen years earlier, the French had failed disastrously. But the U.S. paid a price for victory: a decade of ceaseless, grinding toil, an outlay of more than 350 million dollars — the largest single federal expenditure in history to that time — and the loss of more than 5,000 lives. Along the way, Central America witnessed the brazen overthrow of a sovereign government, the influx of more 55,000 workers from around the globe, the removal of hundreds of millions of tons of earth, and engineering innovation on an unprecedented scale. The construction of the Canal was the epitome of man’s mastery over nature and signaled the beginning of America’s domination of world affairs. Panama Canal features a fascinating cast of characters ranging from the indomitable Theodore Roosevelt, who saw the Canal as the embodiment of American might and ingenuity, to Colonel William Gorgas, an army doctor who instituted a revolutionary public health campaign that all but eradicated Yellow Fever, to the visionary engineers who solved the seemingly impossible problem of cutting a 50-mile long slice through mountains and jungle. The film also delves into the lives of the thousands of workers, rigidly segregated by race, who left their homes to sign on for an unprecedented adventure. In the Canal zone, skilled positions were reserved for white workers while a predominantly West Indian workforce did the backbreaking manual labor, cutting brush, digging ditches and loading and unloading equipment and supplies. Using an extraordinary archive of photographs and footage, rare interviews with canal workers, and firsthand accounts of life in the Canal zone, Panama Canal unravels the remarkable story of one of the world's most daring and significant technological achievements.

In an era in which cold-blooded killers such as Jesse James and the Younger Brothers terrorized the American West, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and their Wild Bunch gang took a smart and methodical approach to bank and train robbery. In the 1890s, their thrilling exploits — robbing banks and trains and then seemingly vanishing into thin air — became front-page news and the basis of rumor and myth, captivating Americans from coast to coast. Born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866, Butch was raised in a devout but poor Mormon family. At age 13, he took a job at a nearby ranch and met a small-time cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy who schooled young Parker on the finer points of larceny. By the time he was 18, Parker was itching to strike out on his own. Famed for its saloons, gambling halls and houses of ill repute, Telluride, Colorado was the place for a young man searching for riches and adventure. Parker found work in the mines but quickly tired of the grueling, fruitless labor. Robbing the local bank seemed a much better bet, and on June 24, 1889, he and two cohorts successfully pulled off the heist. Knowing that hearing of the crime would break his mother’s heart, Parker changed his name to Butch Cassidy. Across the country, in the grimy mill town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, a young boy named Harry Longabaugh could only dream of a life of adventure on the open range. At age 14, he got his chance when he took a job on his cousin’s ranch in Cortez, Colorado. He quickly became an admired cowboy, but after a terrible winter that wiped out most of the herds, he turned to crime and was eventually arrested for horse stealing. When Harry emerged from his yearlong stint in jail, he had a new nickname — the Sundance Kid. He retreated to the steep canyons and unforgiving terrain known as the Outlaw Trail that ran from Montana down to New Mexico, and soon met Butch. Says historian Thom Hatch: “They had a lot in common. They both loved horses. They loved to drink. They loved to gamble, and they could talk larceny all day long.” Boosted by their newly formed gang, the Wild Bunch embarked on a daring and successful crime spree, robbing large banks, trains and coal companies across the West, and enjoying the tacit support of local farmer and landowners. The myth of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and the Wild Bunch grew, and powerful railroad executives, mining barons and cattle kings who were being robbed took action: they hired the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency to catch the gang. The Pinkertons had more than 2,000 full-time agents and 30,000 paid informants and part-timers at their disposal, and Butch, Sundance and the Wild Bunch were no match; slowly but surely, members of the gang were captured or killed. Butch and Sundance escaped to Argentina with Sundance’s companion, the mysterious Etta Place, but even in South America, the outlaws were unable to escape the long arm of the Pinkertons. Entering back into a life of larceny in their attempts to elude old and new enemies, Butch and Sundance met their end after a shootout in Bolivia. Yet even in the drama of their deaths, many refused to believe the era of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had truly come to an end.

A fascinating look at the myth and the man behind it, who, in just a few short years transformed himself from a skinny orphan boy to the most feared man in the West and an enduring western icon. On April 28, 1881, 21-year-old Henry McCarty, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, just days from being hanged for murder, outfoxed his jailors and electrified the nation with the latest in a long line of miraculous escapes. An outlaw with a deadly reputation, the young man was finally gunned down by the ambitious sheriff Pat Garrett just a few weeks later. The felling of one of the most notorious criminals of the age made front-page news and marked the end of Henry -- but it was the beginning of one of the West's most enduring legends. Demonized by the lawman that killed him, the Kid was soon mythologized by a stream of dime store novels and big-screen dramas, portrayed by everyone from Paul Newman to Roy Rogers to Emilio Estevez. But in all the tellings, Billy the Kid's real story has been obscured. Born to impoverished Irish immigrants, Henry McCarty left the slums of New York City with his mother, Catherine, to join the wave of humanity heading west following the end of the Civil War. Lured by the promise of silver, they settled in a remote outpost in southeastern New Mexico, a place on the edge of civilization where Latino, Native American and Anglo cultures mixed freely. Henry embraced this mestiza culture and within a few months was speaking Spanish fluently, wearing sombreros and moccasins, and courting senoritas in the evening. When Catherine remarried, the family fortunes improved. But in 1874, his mother died of tuberculosis, his stepfather abandoned him, and Henry returned to a hardscrabble, itinerant life. An orphan at 15, alone in a tough and transient mining town, it didn't take long for the Kid to find trouble. He became a skilled gambler and fell in with a gang of seasoned outlaws who taught him to steal horses and master a six-shooter. When he killed a bully named Frank Cahill in a barroom brawl, he suddenly went from thief to murderer -- and to a life on the run. Henry McCarty changed his name to William H. Bonney, and there was no turning back. In the lawless corner of New Mexico where Billy came of age, times were changing. Following the Civil War, Anglo businessmen flocked to New Mexico, becoming the largest property owners often wresting land from Hispanic ranchers with the aid of unscrupulous bankers and a rigged legal system. In Lincoln County, two tough Irish immigrants -- Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan -- held a vice-like grip on all moneymaking endeavors. With huge government contracts for their cattle, Murphy and Dolan ruled the county like a fiefdom from their headquarters in the center of Lincoln known simply as "The House." Meanwhile, John Tunstall, a young Englishman with dreams of a cattle empire, moved into Lincoln County. When Billy was arrested for stealing horses from Tunstall, the Englishman surprised Billy by offering him a job. But Tunstall wasn't just looking for a good cowboy — he needed a good gunslinger to defend his land and property. Tunstall treated Billy and the other men he hired with respect, creating a loyal band of outsiders. When "The House," with the help of the local sheriff, conspired to murder Tunstall, Billy and the other Tunstall loyalists sought revenge. Forming a cowboy army they called "The Regulators," they dispensed their own brand of justice, gunning down Sheriff Brady and his men as they strolled the streets of town. All-out war erupted between "The House" and "The Regulators." A participant in almost every skirmish in what became known as "The Lincoln County War," the Kid found it easy to blend into the night, slipping in and out of the small, Hispanic-owned sheep farms that populated the area. By fighting the Anglos who had stolen their land, Billy became something of a folk hero to the Hispanos. Eventually caught by Pat Garrett and convicted of the murder of Sheriff Brady, Billy the Kid escaped one last time, but not for long. On the night of July 14, 1881, as he crept into the home of his sweetheart, Paulita Maxwell, Garrett stepped out of the shadows and gunned him down. The Hispanic community, which had hidden him when the law came looking, mourned him most when he was gone. As writer Denise Chavez says, "People saw him as a voice for the disenfranchised. He was the Robin Hood of New Mexico." A fascinating look at the boy behind the myth, Billy the Kid, features interviews with a wide variety of Western historians and writers, and puts a human face on the legend who in just a few short years transformed himself from a skinny orphan boy to the most feared man in the West to an enduring icon.

This Founding Father came to America alone at age 15. He fought at Washington's side in the Revolution, helped ensure the ratification of the Constitution, and saved the fledgling United States from financial ruin. He died in a tragic duel with his political rival, Aaron Burr. Alexander Hamilton was born on January 11, 1757, in Nevis, British West Indies. His father, James Hamilton, was a Scottish trader. His mother, a French woman named Rachel Fawcett Lavine, was married to another man, John Michael Lavine, at the time of Alexander's birth. She had been cast out of Mr. Lavine's home for adultery. When Alexander was still an infant, James Hamilton abandoned his family. They struggled to survive. Owing to his intelligence and willingness to work, Alexander Hamilton quickly rose above his station. At age 11, he went to work as a clerk in a countinghouse owned by a St. Croix businessman, Nicholas Cruger. Impressed with the boy, Cruger joined with a minister, the Reverend Hugh Knox, to send young Hamilton to study in America. In the fall of 1773, at age 16, Hamilton entered King's College, which would later be renamed Columbia. In 1774, as the Colonies swept toward revolution, he left school to begin a career in politics. That year he wrote "A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress," which defended the First Continental Congress' proposal to embargo trade with Great Britain. In 1776, after the Revolutionary War began, Hamilton received a captain's commission in the Continental Army. He raised an artillery company of his own and proved his bravery at the Battles of Long Island, White Plains, and Trenton. George Washington was among those who recognized Hamilton's leadership capabilities. In 1777 Hamilton accepted a position on Washington's staff. At the time of Hamilton's appointment, the Army was plagued by poor organization and a lack of financing. The prescient Hamilton, realizing that these problems would also plague the liberated colonies unless they were solved, began to search for solutions. Alexander Hamilton served admirably throughout the war. During this time he found love in the person of Elizabeth Schuyler, daughter of a powerful New York landholder and military officer, Philip Schuyler. Alexander and Elizabeth married in 1780. For the most part, their marriage was a happy one, but later it would suffer from Hamilton's infidelity. Following the war, Hamilton passed the New York bar and set up practice in New York City. Among his first clients were Loyalists, people who kept their allegiance to the King of England during the war. At the war's end, many New York rebels returned to find their homes and businesses occupied by Loyalists. Under the Trespass Act, these people could sue Loyalists for compensation for the use of and damage to their property. Hamilton's powerful defense of Loyalists helped establish principles of due process and ensure the Trespass Act's repeal. In 1787 delegates met in Philadelphia to repair the weak Articles of Confederation, which were failing to hold the union together. Hamilton, a New York delegate, believed that the solution to the problem involved creating a stronger central government and providing a steady revenue stream for this government. Although Hamilton had little influence on the writing of the Constitution, he was a driving force for its ratification. Along with John Jay and James Madison, Hamilton wrote "The Federalist," a series of essays that defended the yet-to-be-approved Constitution. Hamilton composed more than two-thirds of the 85 essays, which were published in New York newspapers in 1787-88. Later in 1788, Hamilton attended the New York ratification convention. Using his considerable skill as an orator, he turned back an overwhelming Anti-Federalist tide to win ratification. Upon his election in 1789, George Washington chose Alexander Hamilton as the nation's first Treasury secretary. Hamilton crafted a monetary policy that undoubtedly saved the nation from ruin. Among the features of the Hamilton plan were the payment of federal war bonds, the assumption of state debts by the federal government, and the creation of a mechanism for collecting taxes. During his tenure as Treasury secretary, Hamilton clashed repeatedly with another cabinet member, Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton favored a powerful central government while Jefferson feared it; Hamilton favored closer relations with Britain, and Jefferson, with France. The men would both resign their Cabinet posts before the end of Washington's first term. They would remain lifelong political enemies. Hamilton might have risen to the presidency if not for a scandal in 1797. A pamphlet published that year revealed Hamilton's affair with a woman named Maria Reynolds and linked him to a scheme by Reynolds' husband to illegally manipulate federal securities. To prove his innocence, Hamilton resorted to publishing love letters he had written to Maria Reynolds. This cleared Hamilton of financial impropriety, but badly damaged his reputation. The scandal did not stop George Washington from appointing Hamilton acting commander of the U.S. Army in 1798 when the country was on the brink of war with France. In 1800 Hamilton's old enemy, Aaron Burr, obtained and published a confidential document Hamilton had written that was highly critical of Federalist John Adams, then president. Publication of the article created a rift in the Federalist party, helping Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr to win the race for presidency. But since the two men tied in electoral votes, it was up to Congress to decide the outcome. Hamilton lobbied Congressional federalists to vote for Jefferson, to little effect. Still, Congress chose Jefferson as president. Burr assumed the vice presidency. In the New York gubernatorial race of 1804, Hamilton again clashed with Aaron Burr. Burr ran as an independent. Hamilton feared that Burr would eclipse him in the Federalist leadership. He spoke out against the vice president, and New York Republicans George and DeWitt Clinton led a brutal media campaign against Burr. The Clintons, not Hamilton, were responsible for Burr's defeat. Still, after reading in a newspaper that Hamilton had expressed a "despicable opinion" about him during the campaign, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. They met on the dueling grounds at Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, 1804. Both men fired their pistols; only Hamilton was hit. He died of his wounds the next day.

One journalist described it as a chance "to see justice catch up with evil." On November 20, 1945, the twenty-two surviving representatives of the Nazi elite stood before an international military tribunal at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany; they were charged with the systematic murder of millions of people. The ensuing trial pitted U.S. chief prosecutor and Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson against Hermann Göring, the former head of the Nazi air force, whom Adolf Hitler had once named to be his successor. Jackson hoped that the trial would make a statement that crimes against humanity would never again go unpunished. Proving the guilt of the defendants, however, was more difficult than Jackson anticipated. This American Experience production draws upon rare archival material and eyewitness accounts to recreate the dramatic tribunal that defines trial procedure for state criminals to this day.

For generations, Monopoly has been America’s favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and — for better or worse — the impulses that make our free-market society tick. But behind the myth of the game’s creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing. Contrary to the folksy legend spread by Parker Brothers, Monopoly’s secret history is a surprising saga that features a radical feminist, a community of Quakers in Atlantic City, America’s greatest game company, and an unemployed Depression-era engineer. And the real story behind the creation of the game might never have come to light if it weren’t for the determination of an economics professor and impassioned anti-monopolist. Part detective story, part sharp social commentary and part pop-culture celebration, Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History presents the fascinating true story behind America’s favorite game.

On August 1, 1884, a rescue vessel pulled into the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire carrying First Lieutenant Adolphus Greely and the five other remaining survivors of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. Three years earlier, 25 men had set sail for the far North, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data about the Arctic — a vast area of the world's surface that had been described as a "sheer blank." Greely and his men completed that task, only to be abandoned in one of the harshest environments on Earth. The Greely Expedition reveals how poor planning, personality clashes, questionable decisions and pure bad luck conspired to turn a noble scientific mission into a human tragedy. Adolphus Greely joined the United States Army in 1861. After fighting for the Union in the American Civil War, Greely became involved in the campaign to build a nationwide telegraph system for the Signal Corps. There, he learned about technology and weather systems. In the 1870s, Greely developed an interest in the Arctic region; he also heard of a potential exploratory mission to the far North. The purpose of the expedition was to collect scientific data as part of the first International Polar Year, the effort to gather concurrent geophysical measurements at various sites around the Arctic region. "This was not simply some new Arctic expedition. This is really an attempt at a new science of the world," says historian Michael Frederick Robinson in the film. The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, however, had another motive: the United States wanted to beat the longstanding "Farthest North" record claimed by the British for decades. Greely, with no prior experience or knowledge of Arctic weather and condition, was given command of the mission, which launched in the summer of 1881. Five weeks after departing from St. John's, Newfoundland aboard the U.S.S. Proteus, Greely and his team reached Ellesmere Island in the Arctic Circle and prepared for their unprecedented mission. Left there with 350 tons of supplies, the team went to work building an outpost they christened Fort Conger, which would serve as their home for the coming two years. They recorded daily measurements of the weather and prepared for the springtime attempt at reaching "Farthest North." By summer, a relief ship would pick them up and bring them home. But in the summer of 1882, the relief ship did not come. The expedition team had brought supplies to last three years at Fort Conger, but the men were wary and facing the grim reality of another year in the far North. The dark, Arctic winter was tough on many members of the team. It took only a few people to do the scientific work, and several men were left idle. "At the beginning most of the men did the scientific work because they were told to do it," says Robinson. "But as the men begin to contemplate that they may not return home, then suddenly leaving behind some kind of legacy for all this pain and suffering becomes more important." Greely's militaristic style kept order in place but left some questioning his leadership capabilities. When in 1883 the relief ship failed once again to show up at Fort Conger, Greely ordered his men to abandon their post and sail three small boats over 250 miles of open ocean to the south where the Army had planned to leave a rescue party. If the Army's ship could not reach Lady Franklin Bay, the plan was for Greely's team to go to the Army; there, at least, they would find food, reinforcements, and possibly even news from home. The men, however, were hesitant to leave the relative safety of Fort Conger. Morale reached a new low among Greely's team, and there was talk of mutiny. After a harrowing trip, Greely and his men arrived at Cape Sabine to find only a few weeks' worth of provisions. "No game, no food, and apparently no hopes from Littleton Island," Greely wrote in his journal. "We have been lured here to our destruction. We are 24 starved men; we have done all we can to help ourselves, and shall ever struggle on, but it drives me almost insane to face the future. It is not the end that affrights anyone, but the road to be traveled to reach that goal. To die is easy; very easy; it is only hard to strive, to endure, to live." With only a makeshift shelter and virtually no animals to be found in the desolate region, men began to die one by one of hunger and exposure to the elements. They endured frostbite and natural amputation, madness, and even cannibalism. By the time a final relief force arrived the following summer, in 1884, only seven emaciated, unrecognizable men remained inside a half-collapsed tent. Although his team had earned the extraordinary title of "Farthest North," and amassed a vast collection of valuable scientific observations, Greely became mired in scandal upon his return to the U.S. Published in the press, gruesome accounts of cannibalism and murder tainted Greely's reputation as a commander as well as the team's scientific achievements for more than a century. More recently, however, Greely's Arctic data has been revisited and the numbers have contributed to scientists' understanding of this relatively unknown area of the world. "We are now using [Greely's] data to understand how global warming happens," says Robinson, "to understand how the climate has changed over the last hundred years."

An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century, Henry Ford offers an incisive look at the birth of the American auto industry with its long history of struggles between labor and management. The film is a thought-provoking reminder of how Ford's automobile forever changed the way we work, where we live, and our ideas about individuality, freedom, and possibility.

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had amassed a fortune and achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light. When Edison died on October 18, he lay in state for two days in the library of his West Orange complex, as thousands of people lined up to pay their final respects. On the third night, at the request of President Herbert Hoover, radio listeners across the country switched off their lights as a reminder of what life would have been like without Edison. Edison explores the complex alchemy that accounts for the enduring celebrity of America's most famous inventor, offering new perspectives on the man and his milieu, and illuminating not only the true nature of invention, but its role in turn-of-the-century America's rush into the future.