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Additional Class Topics

For Further Interest: Additional Class Topics
Chapter 26: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865 - 1896

  • Focus on one of the notable Indian chiefs (for example, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, or Geronimo). Examine their roles as leaders of their people both in resistance to white conquest and under the forced circumstances of reservation life. Consider their subsequent role as continuing symbols in later American history and culture.

  • Discuss the validity of the frontier thesis first advanced by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. (See Expanding the Varying Viewpointsfor an excerpt from Turners famous essay.) Consider how his use of the word frontier contrasts with common understanding, in which the term refers almost entirely to the postCivil War frontier of the Great West.

  • Examine the life of the typical homesteader on the Great Plains, perhaps drawing on literary works like those of Ole Rolvaag or Willa Cather. Consider why such a person might be led to join the Farmers Alliances. Perhaps compare the condition of pioneer farmers with those in the South, white and black.

  • Consider the rapid rise and fall of the Populists in both the West and the South. Consider the attempt by Populists like Tom Watson to overcome racial division, and explain the reasons he and other disillusioned reformers later turned to a vicious racism.

  • Examine Hannas free-spending policies in the 1896 election. Assess what role campaign spending (and other political tactics) may have had in defeating Bryan, compared to the deeper social and political forces that kept most of the urban working class from supporting the pro-silver campaign.

  • Analyze the long-term significance of the Republican victory in 1896. Consider McKinley as a symbol of triumphant urban industrial capitalism and the harbinger of an age of Republican political domination.

  • Have the students read Frederick Jackson Turners The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) in David A. Hollinger and Charles Cappers (Editors) The American Intellectual Tradition: Volume II 1865 to the Present, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.



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