Unit 10 The Gilded Age 1865-1900
Essential Questions
1. Why did late 19th century presidential elections tend to focus on the personalities of the candidates rather than on real issues?
2. List what appear to you to have been the requirements for election to high political office in the 1870s and 1880s.
3. Which of the following do you think was the most important issue of the late 19th century: the “bloody shirt”, tariffs, civil service reform, currency? Why?
4. In what ways did the mining, ranching, and farming frontiers respond to the industrial revolution in the same way as entrepreneurs and laborers?
5. The Homestead Act was less successful than hoped. Why? Consider the provisions of the law and its loopholes, and environmental conditions on the Great Plains.
6. Explain the defeat of the Plains Indians by whites. Select and discuss at least three major reasons for the decline of the Plains culture.
7. What do you think was the major technological innovation that influenced life on the Great Plains frontier? Why?
8. Comment on the text authors’ observation that “where fighting is protracted and uncivilized, the ethics of combat are ordinarily pulled down to a primitive level.” Do you agree? Explain.
9. Why did Thomas Reed get the nickname “Czar”?
10. Trace the history of the currency question from the passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act to the passage of the Gold Standard Act.
11. Populists often charged that there was a conspiracy between government and big business aimed at holding down the farmer and worker. What evidence did they cite to prove this?
12. Explain why the Populist Party at first became the most successful third part in American history up to that time, and then explain why it failed to survive the decade of the 1890s.
13. Why did free silver become the key issue of the farmers’ revolt?