Unit 7: The Gilded Age

Lessons

Chapter 23 - Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1896 (Course Notes)
Chapter 24 - Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900 (Course Notes)
Chapter 25 - America Moves to the City, 1865-1900 (Course Notes)
Chapter 26 - The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896 (Course Notes)

What motivated the United States to exert control over Native American lands in the west?
How did federal government policies affect the lives of Native Americans in the 19th century?

What were the various motivations of different groups of settlers in the west?
How did new inventions and innovations impact the economy of the west?
How did settlers respond to and transform the environment of the west?
How did new inventions and innovations encourage industrial growth?
How did industrial leaders amass and wield power?
What was the role of the federal government in encouraging the growth and regulating the practices of big business?
What were the various governmental and social reactions to the influx of immigrants?
To what extent did immigrants retain their traditions, assimilate, and transform American culture itself?

Why was the period of the late 1800s nicknamed the "Gilded Age" and the "Era of Good Stealings"?
What factors led to the development and reform of political machines and the spoils system?
Why did meaningful reform prove difficult to accomplish during the Gilded Age?
How was the southern economy transformed in the decades following the Civil War?
How and why were African Americans denied the full rights guaranteed to them under the post-Civil War amendments?
How did African American leaders respond to the challenges of racial discrimination?

How did new cultural and intellectual movements both buttress and challenge the social order of the Gilded Age?

Free Response Question (FRQ)

For whom and to what extent was the west a land of opportunity in the period from 1865 to 1890?