Unit 3 Objectives and Questions
Content Objectives:
•
Review the Native American experience.
•
Analyze the economic challenges to American farmers and farmers’ responses to the challenges
in the mid to late 1800s.
•
Analyze changes that occurred as the United States shifted from agrarian to an industrial
society.
•
Assess the validity of the Turner thesis
•
Examine the social, political, and economic causes, course, and consequences of the Second
Industrial Revolution that began in the late 19th century.
•
Compare the first and second Industrial Revolutions in the United States.
•
Determine how the development of steel, oil, transportation, communication, and business
practices affected the United States economy.
•
Identify significant inventors of the Industrial Revolution including African Americans and
women.
•
Analyze changes that occurred as the United States shifted from agrarian to an industrial
society.
•
Examine causes, course, and consequences of the labor movement in the late 19th and early
20th centuries.
•
Assess how processes, patterns, and functions helped determine where immigrants settled in
America.
•
Review the causes and consequences of urbanization and immigration.
•
Identify the significant government responses to industrialization and urbanization.
•
Determine how industrialization and urbanization affected party politics.
Class Discussion Questions for Unit 3:
1.
Why would people take on the challenges of life in the West? What various ethnic and racial
groups populated the American West, and how were the cultural characteristics of these groups
reflected in the West? How did prejudices affect western society?
2.
What encouraged settlers to move West? What role did technology play? Describe the
importance of the nation’s railroads in the rise of America’s second industrial revolution.
3.
How did the arrival and settlement of substantial numbers of Anglo-Americans transform the
society and economy of the West? How did the arrival of new settlers affect the Plains Indians?
4.
How did American farmers respond to challenges in the West?
5.
How the role of women change after the Civil War? What role did western isolation play in the
lives of women?
6.
What was the role of the federal government in western development? What major industries
were involved in the development of the West, and how did these industries transform western
societies?
7.
What are the main tenets of Turner’s frontier thesis? How did the portrayal of the West by the
newer western historians differ from the West that Turner described? Why did the newer western
historians challenge Turner’s view, and why has their depiction of the West, in turn, provoked such
controversy?
8.
What was the romantic image of the West and how was this image expressed in art, literature,
and popular culture?
9.
What factors drove America’s industrial expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries? Who were some of the business and industrial titans of the late nineteenth century, and what
did they contribute to America’s industrial growth? What changes took place in corporate organization
in the late nineteenth century, and how did these changes affect the nation’s economy?
10.
Who were the critics of America’s new industrial economy, what were their criticisms, and what
solutions did they propose? How did reformers of the period approach the problems of an industrial
society?
11.
How did the conditions and characteristics of the workforce change during this period of rapid
industrialization? How did workers respond to the expansion of industrialization and the new industrial
economy? How did the economic development of the Gilded Age affect American freedom?
12.
What were some of the changes in the nation’s economy, social conditions, and international
status during the decades of industrial growth in the years after the Civil War?
13.
How did Social Darwinism attempt to justify the social consequences of industrial capitalism?
What was Darwinism’s impact on American intellectual life?
14.
What were some of the problems that resulted from rapid urbanization, and how did urban
governments respond to these problems? What was the relationship between immigration and
urbanization in the late nineteenth century? How did the development of an urban, industrial society
exacerbate inequalities in U.S. society and promote class violence?
15.
How did the sources of immigration to America shift in the late nineteenth century, and what
was the native response to the change? What were some of the “push” and “pull” factors that
motivated the migration of both Europeans and non-Europeans? Why did European empires encourage
and facilitate the migration of Europeans and non-Europeans to new lands? Why did more Europeans
than non-Europeans migrate to the United States?
16.
How did the rise of mass consumption affect leisure and entertainment?
17.
In what way did the serious art and literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries function as social criticism? What were these artists and writers criticizing?
18.
How did the new consumer economy affect roles and expectations for women?
19.
How did the two major political parties respond to the problems of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries? What was Populism, what were its goals, and to what degree were these goals
achieved? How and why did the federal government attempt to regulate interstate commerce in the
late nineteenth century? Was the Gilded Age political system effective in meeting its goals?
20.
What have been historians’ principal interpretations of Populism? Why has the issue of
Populism generated such debate among historians? Where can you find evidence of the Populist legacy
in politics today?
21.
How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across the South? In
what ways did the boundaries of American freedom grow narrower in this period? How does the politics
of memory, focusing on the Civil War and Reconstruction, demonstrate how whites removed blacks
from a significant role in U.S. history?
22.
How did employers use state and federal forces to protect their own economic interests, and
what were the results?
23.
Why is the election of 1896 called the first modern presidential election?