- Analyze the corruption of the Gilded Age
in relation to the increasingly low moral and political standards of the time.
Contrast the quality of politicians with those of the previous ageClay,
Jackson, Webster, and Lincoln.
REFERENCE: Mark Summers, The
Era of Good Stealings (1993).
- Examine the impact of the new political
alignments in the South. Consider the role of redeemers, poor
whites, and blacks in the post-Reconstruction era.
REFERENCES: Otto Olsen, Reconstruction
and Redemption in the South (1980); Michael Perman, The
Road to Redemption (1984).
- Consider the link between racial and labor
conflict, especially in places like California, where the racially
different Chinese were seen as threats to the advances of white (often
Irish or other immigrant) working people.
REFERENCE: Alexander Saxton, The
Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1975).
- Examine the depression of the 1890s as
the immediate context for the growing sense of class crisis in America. Consider
the different but related grievances of western and southern farmers and (largely)
northern and eastern industrial workers.
REFERENCES: Charles Hoffman, The
Depression of the Nineties (1970); Paul Krause, The
Battle for Homestead, 1880 - 1892 (1992); Robert McMath, American Populism (1993).
