American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Chapter 19: FROM CRISIS TO EMPIRE

Essay

1
How much policy difference was there between the Republicans and the Democrats in the Gilded Age?
2
Compare and contrast the three major farm groups: the Grange, the Farmers' Alliances, and the Populists. Do you agree with historians who believe that Populism was a reasonable and realistic response to agrarian grievances?
3
What were the basic positions in the currency debate? What constituencies tended to support the positions? Where did the issue stand by the turn of the century?
4
Compare and contrast the new and old concepts of Manifest Destiny. Look especially at the economic, philosophical, and racial motives for overseas expansion. Were these factors at work in the older continental expansionism?
5
What hesitations and doubts about imperialism did Americans evince between 1865 and 1898? How did the Spanish-American War change all this?
6
Was the Spanish-American conflict indeed a "splendid little war"? What was splendid about it? What was not so splendid?
7
What parallels can be drawn between America's imperial aspirations and the way white Americans dealt with the American Indian?
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