The Gilded Age, Conquering the West, Industrialization, Labor Movements
 

(USIA) CHAPTER 7: GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION
     Technology and Change -- Carnegie and the Era of Steel -- Corporations and Cities -- Railroads, Regulations and the Tariff -- Revolution in Agriculture -- The Divided South -- The Last Frontier -- The Plight of the Indians -- Ambivalent Empire --  The Canal and the Americas -- United States and Asia

Virtual Library

Primary sources, 1876-1900

The Gilded Age
     From "The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie" by PBS

Gilded Age Links
     The movement to end child labor, 1906 to 1938.

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York
     An electronic edition of Jacob Riis's 1890 book.

Sweatshops
     Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, many  generations of Americans have toiled in sweatshops. Then, as now, their labor has been accompanied by widespread debate over what constitutes a fair wage, reasonable working conditions, and society's responsibility for meeting those standards.

Wilmington, N.C., Race Riot, 1898

      The 1898 riot and coup d'etat in Wilmington that killed an unknown number of black residents actually was a planned insurrection that white supremacists spent months organizing. The violence was part of a statewide effort -- with a pivotal role played by The News & Observer and other newspapers -- to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens. The incident is the only known violent overthrow of a government in U.S. history. Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed the laws that would disfranchise a race of people for generations -- until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s. From a report released in May 2006 by the state-appointed 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.

Thomas Nast
      Links to samples of the best work of the 19th century's best-known political cartoonist

The Autobiography of Geronimo
     One of the best known Native American leaders in his own words

Transcontintental Railroad
    Oakes Ames, shown here in the painting "Driving the Last Spike."  The Ames monument in Sherman Summit, Wyoming, was built for the Union Pacific Railroad at the highest point on the line. It was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who also designed many Easton landmarks. More on the Ames brothers, from Stonehill College. Oakes and Blanche Ames from the Borderland website. Entries on the Credit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s from Infoplease and "American Passages."

The Open Door
      John Hay to Andrew D. White, Sept. 6 1899 

Miltary history, late 1800s

Miltary history, Spanish-American War
 

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