AP US HistoryName:

Unit Plan

PERIOD 6: 1865–1898

The transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society brought about significant economic, political, diplomatic, social, environmental, and cultural changes.

Key Concept 6.1: The rise of big business in the United States encouraged massive migrations and urbanization, sparked government and popular efforts to reshape the U.S. economy and environment, and renewed debates over U.S. national identity.

Key Concept 6.2:The emergence of an industrial culture in the United States led to both greater opportunities for, and restrictions on, immigrants, minorities, and women.

Key Concept 6.3: The “Gilded Age” witnessed new cultural and intellectual movements in tandem with political debates over economic and social policies.

Day # / Date / Reading Due / Assignment Due / In-Class Topic
1 / 1/21 (A) & 1/22 (B) / ______/ ______/ Conquering a Continent, 1854 - 1890
2 / 1/26 (A) & 1/27 (B) / America’s History (Ch. 16) / ______/ Conquering a Continent, 1854 - 1890
3 / 1/28 (A) & 1/29 (B) / America’s History (Ch. 17) / ______/ Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877 - 1911
4 / 1/30 (A) & 2/2 (B) / A People’s History of the United States (Ch. 11 – Robber Barons and Rebels) [ONLINE] / 4-3-2-1 Reading Guide for People’s History (Ch. 11) / Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 1877 – 1911
5 / 2/3 (A) & 2/4 (B) / America’s History (Ch. 18) / Traveling Through the New South (Reading Questions) [ONLINE] / The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880 -1917
6 / 2/5 (A) & 2/6 (B) / America’s History (Ch. 19) / ______/ “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880 -1917
7 / 2/9 (A) & 2/10 (B) / ______/ Tammany Hall (Reading & Questions) [ONLINE] / “Civilization’s Inferno”: The Rise and Reform of Industrial Cities, 1880 -1917
8 / 2/11 (A) & 2/12 (B) / America’s History (Ch. 20) / ______/ Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880 – 1917
9 / 2/17 (A) & 2/18 (B) / ______/ ______/ Whose Government? Politics, Populists, and Progressives, 1880 – 1917
10 / 2/19 (A) & 2/20 (B) / ______/ Outline for Long-Essay Question / Period 6 Test

Essential Questions:

  • How did migration to the West and debates over political values shape the growth of racial and ethnic identities and lead to conflicts over assimilation and distinctiveness?
  • How did changes in transportation and technology, along with the integration of the U.S. economy into worldwide economic, labor, and migration systems, influence U.S. society?
  • How were philosophical, moral, and scientific ideas used to defend and challenge the dominant economic and social order?
  • How and why did new labor systems develop, and how did industrialization shape U.S. society and worker’s lives?
  • What were the significant similarities and differences among reformers who advocated changes to the economic, political, and social system of the New South? How do their beliefs, strategies, and level of success compare?
  • What were the strategies that different groups developed for addressing the problems of the Gilded Age?

Key Concepts and Events / People

Chapter 16: transcontinental railroad, protective tariff, Munn v. Illinois, gold standard, Homestead Act, Morrill Act, land-grant colleges, Comstock Lode, Exodusters, Sand Creek massacre, Dawes Severalty Act, Battle of Little Big Horn, Ghost Dance movement, Wounded Knee, William Seward, Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, George Armstrong Custer

Chapter 17: vertical integration, horizontal integration, trust, mass production, scientific management, Chinese Exclusion Act, Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Knights of Labor, Haymarket Square, Farmers’ Alliance, Interstate Commerce Act, American Federation of Labor, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Gompers

Chapter 18: Plessy v. Ferguson, Young Men’s Christian Association, Comstock Act, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, National American Suffrage Association, feminism, Social Darwinism, Social Gospel, fundamentalism, Thomas Edison, Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, Billy Sunday

Chapter 19: Tenement, yellow journalism, muckrackers, political machine, progressivism, Hull House, Pure Food and Drug Act, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, Margaret Sanger, Upton Sinclair

Chapter 20: Gilded Age, Pendleton Act, Sherman Antitrust Act, Omaha Platform, recall, referendum, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Industrial Workers of the World, Federal Reserve Act, Clayton Antitrust Act, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eugene V. Debs

Reading Notes

Chapter 16:

  1. In what ways did Republicans use federal power on the world stage, and in what ways did they continue policies from the pre-Civil War era? (pg. 510)
  2. Compare the development of mining, ranching, and farming in the West. How did their environmental consequences differ? (pg. 521)
  3. What factors led to the creation of the first national parks? (pg. 524)
  4. What factors led to warfare between whites and native peoples on the plains? (pg. 527)
  5. How did post-Civil War reformers believe they were improving U.S. Indian policies, and in what ways did that prove to be true and untrue? (pg. 529)
  6. How did Grant’s peace policy fail to consider the needs of Native Americans in the West, and what were its results? (pg. 533)
  7. In what ways did the outlook of native peoples change in the era after armed resistance had ended? (pg. 534)

Chapter 17:

  1. Why did large corporations arise in the late nineteenth century, and how did leading industrialists consolidate their power? (pg. 547)
  2. What opportunities did the rise of corporations offer to different types of “middle workers”—those who were neither top executives nor blue-collar laborers? (pg. 549)
  3. How did conditions change for industrial workers in the late nineteenth century, and why? (pg. 551)
  4. What factors accounted for the different expectations and experiences of immigrants in this era? (pg. 558)
  5. What were the long-term consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act for U.S. immigration policy? (pg. 564)
  6. How did the methods used by railroad workers to protest their working conditions compare with the tactics employed by the Greenbackers, who also sought reform? (pg. 566)
  7. What factors contributed to the rapid rise of the Knights of Labor? To its decline? (pg. 567)
  8. Why did farmers and industrial workers cooperate, and what political objectives did they achieve? (pg. 569)
  9. How did the key institutions and goals of the labor movement change, and what gains and losses resulted from this shift? (pg. 570)

Chapter 18:

  1. How did new consumer practices, arising from industrialization, reshape Americans’ gender, class, and race relationships? (pg. 577)
  2. How and why did Americans sports evolve, and how did athletics soften or sharpen social divisions? (pg. 581)
  3. What changes in American society precipitated the rise of national parks and monuments? (pg. 583)
  4. In what ways did the Comstock Act reflect and contradict the realities of American life in the industrial era? (pg. 586)
  5. How did educational opportunities change after the Civil War, and for whom? (pg. 587)
  6. How did women use widespread beliefs about their “special role” to justify political activism, and for what goals? (pg. 590)
  7. How did the ideas of scientists and social scientists reflect events they saw happening around them? (pg. 594)
  8. What effect did technology and scientific ideas have on literature and the arts? (pg. 595)
  9. How did America’s religious life change in this era, and what prompted those changes? (pg. 600)

Chapter 19:

  1. How were America’s industrial cities different from the typical city before 1860? (pg. 608)
  2. What opportunities did urban neighborhoods provide to immigrants and African Americans, and what problems did these newcomers face? (pg. 613)
  3. How did working-class and elite city residents differ in how they spent their money and leisure time? (pg. 615)
  4. Why, given that everyone agreed machines were corrupt, did urban voters support them? (pg. 622)
  5. How did reformers try to address the limits of machine government? To what extent did they succeed? (pg. 624)
  6. What prompted the rise of urban environmental and antiprostitution campaigns? (pg. 625)
  7. What were the origins of social settlements, and how did they develop over time? (pg. 628)
  8. How did urban reform movements impact state and national politics? (pg. 632)

Chapter 20:

  1. What factors led to close party competition in the 1880s? (pg. 638)
  2. How did political goals of Populists differ in this period from those of Democrats and Republicans? (pg. 643)
  3. How did different groups react to the economic depression of the 1890s, and what happened as a result? (pg. 645)
  4. How did politics change in the South between the 1880s and the 1910s? (pg. 646)
  5. What developments caused the percentage of Americans who voted to plunge after 1900, and what role did courts play in antidemocratic development? (pg. 649)
  6. To what degree, and in what ways, were Roosevelt’s policies progressive? (pg. 651)
  7. How did various grassroots reformers define “progressivism,” and how did their views differ from Theodore Roosevelt’s version of “progressivism”? (pg. 655)
  8. Why did the election of 1912 feature four candidates, and how did their platforms differ? (pg. 657)
  9. To what degree did reforms of the Wilson era fulfill goals that various agrarian-labor advocates and progressives had sought? (pg. 661)
  10. What factors explain the limits of progressive reform in the United States? (pg. 663)