AP U.S. History
Chapter 25: America Moves to the City: 1865-1900
Focus Question
Evaluate the impact of urbanization between 1865 and 1900 in two of the following areas:
Politics and government
Popular culture and entertainment
Economics.
Learning Objectives
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Describe the rise of the American industrial city, and place it in the context of worldwide
trends of urbanization and mass migration (the European diaspora).
Describe the New Immigration, and explain how it differed from the Old Immigration
and why it aroused opposition from many native-born Americans.
Discuss the efforts of social reformers and churches to aid the New Immigrants and
alleviate urban problems, and the immigrants’ own efforts to sustain their traditions while
assimilating to mainstream America.
Analyze the changes in American religious life in the late nineteenth century, including
the expansion of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Judaism, and the growing Protestant
division between liberals and fundamentalists over Darwinism and biblical criticism.
Explain the changes in American education and intellectual life, including the debate
between DuBois and Washington over the goals of African American education.
Describe the literary and cultural life of the period, including the widespread trend
towards realism in art and literature, and the city beautiful movement led by urban
planners.
Explain the growing national debates about morality in the late nineteenth century,
particularly in relation to the changing roles of women and the family.
Questions
The Urban Frontier (539)
1. How did the rapid growth of American cities in the post-Civil War decades compare to urban
growth around the world? What were the two largest cities in the world in 1900?
2. What were the factors that increasingly made cities more attractive than farms for young
adults? What was the MAJOR factor in drawing people off the farms and into the big cities?
3. How did the development of electric trolleys in the late nineteenth century transform the
American city? How did large department stores symbolize the dawning era of consumerism
in urban America?
4. How did increasing waste and the need for waste disposal lead to a major and enduring
change in American lifestyles? What were slums, dumbbell tenements, flophouses, and the
"Lung Block"?
5. Why did American cities increasingly abandon wooden construction for brick and steel in
their downtown districts after 1871?
The New Immigration (542)
6. By the late nineteenth century, how did most Americans regard the Old Immigrant groups
from northern and Western Europe? How were the New Immigrants who came to the United
States after 1880 culturally different from previous immigrant groups?
7. What two immigrant ethnic groups were most harshly treated in the mid to late nineteenth
century? Why were the New Immigrant groups regarded with special hostility by many
nativist Americans?
Southern Europe Uprooted (544)
8. What was a "bird of passage"? How did most New Immigrants try to preserve their Old
Country culture in America?
Reactions to the New Immigration (545)
9. Why did big-city political bosses and their machines often prove necessary and effective in
the new urban environment?
10. What changes in churches did prominent Protestant pastors like Walter Rauschenbusch and
Washington Gladden urge?
11. What activities characterized settlement houses, such as Hull House?
12. What reforms did settlement workers like Jane Addams and Florence Kelley advocate?
13. How did the big city offer the greatest opportunities for American women in the period 18651900? In the 1890s, what sort of women were able to obtain white collar positions as
secretaries, department store clerks, and telephone operators? Why were the vast majority of
employed female workers in the late nineteenth century single?
Makers of America (546)
14. For what reasons did most Italian immigrants come to the United States between 1880 and
1920?
Narrowing the Welcome Mat (550)
15. How did the American Protective Association promote support for immigration restrictions?
Why did labor unions favor immigration restrictions?
Churches Confront the Urban Challenge (551)
16. In the new urban environment, how did most liberal Protestants adjust their theology?
17. By the late 1890s how many religious denominations were there in America? How did
Roman Catholicism become the denomination most positively engaged with the New
Immigration?
Darwin Disrupts the Churches (553)
18. How did Darwin's theories affect American religion?
19. How did the liberal Protestant attempt to accommodate religion to modern science also tend
to relegate religion to a private sphere of personal conduct and family life?
The Lust for Learning (553)
20. Why did Americans offer growing support for a free public education system in the late 19th
century?
21. Why did the post-Civil War era witness an increase in compulsory school-attendance laws?
22. How was the success of the public schools reflected in a falling illiteracy rate?
Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People (554)
23. What did Booker T. Washington see as the key to political and civil rights for African
Americans? Why did he promote black self-help but not challenge segregation?
24. On what did W.E.B. DuBois urge that black education should concentrate? What did he
demand for African Americans?
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy (555)
25. In the decades after the Civil War, why did college education for women become much more
common?
26. What were the two major sources of funding for the new American research universities of
the late 19th century? What were some of these major new universities of the post-Civil War
era?
The March of the Mind (557)
27. Why did the modern American university de-emphasize religious and moral instruction?
28. In what way did life expectancy change during the second industrial revolution? What did
the pragmatists emphasize?
The Appeal of the Press (557)
29. How did Andrew Carnegie contribute to the public library movement across America? How
did Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst change newspaper publishing?
Apostles of Reform (558)
30. What did Henry George see as the root of social inequality and social injustice? How did
Edward Bellamy's novel, Looking Backward, inspire numerous late-nineteenth-century social
reformers?
The New Morality (559)
31. What evidence reflected changes in sexual attitudes and practices in the decades after the
Civil War?
Families and Women in the City (562)
32. What were the major factors leading to an increased divorce rate in the late nineteenth
century? Why did family size gradually decline over the course of the late nineteenth
century?
33. Reflecting women's increasing independence in the late 1890s, what changes did author and
feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman support?
34. What were the major arguments of advocates of women's suffrage by 1900?
35. Why did the National American Woman Suffrage Association limit its membership to
whites?
Prohibiting Alcohol and Promoting Reform (564)
36. How did the growing prohibition movement reflect the concerns of middle class women?
Postwar Popular Fiction (565)
37. How did General Lewis Wallace attempt to defend Christianity against Darwinism?
38. What sorts of fiction did Horatio Alger produce?
Literary Landmarks (565)
39. Which prominent post-Civil War writers reflected the increased attention to social problems
by those from less affluent backgrounds? How did Henry James differ from many of his
literary peers?
Artistic Triumphs (568)
40. What were the achievements of Winslow Homer, James McNeil Whistler, Mary Cassatt,
John Singer Sargent, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Daniel
Burnham?
The Business of Amusement (570)
41. What were the leading pastimes of late-nineteenth-century Americans? What new sports
were developed during this period?
42. How did industrialization cause Americans to increasingly share a common and standardized
popular culture?