Chapter 23 Reading Study Guide

Reading ObjectivesAfter reading this chapter, you should be able to:1. Describe the political corruption of the Grant administration and the mostly unsuccessful

efforts to reform politics during the Gilded Age.2. Describe the economic crisis of the 1870s, and explain the growing conflict between hard-

money and soft-money advocates.3. Explain the intense political partisanship of the Gilded Age, despite the parties’ lack of

ideological difference and poor quality of political leadership.4. Indicate how the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 led to the Compromise of 1877 and

the end of Reconstruction.5. Describe how the end of Reconstruction led to the loss of black rights and the imposition of

the Jim Crow system of segregation in the South.6. Explain the rise of class conflict between business and labor in the 1870s and the growing

hostility to immigrants, especially the Chinese.7. Explain the economic crisis and depression of the 1890s, and indicate how the Cleveland

Administration failed to address it.8. Show how the farm crisis of the depression of the 1890s stirred growing social protests and

class conflict, and fueled the rise of the radical Populist Party.

Objective Questions1. What was the purpose of Republicans “waving the bloody shirt” in 1868?

2. What was the Tweed Ring?

3. What did Boss Tweed do that was so corrupt?

4. Describe what happened during the Credit Mobilier scandal.

5. Why did Horace Greeley lose the election of 1872? (In other words, what factors caused him to lose?)

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

6. What caused the Panic of 1873?

7. What did advocates of “hard money” want? What did advocates of “soft money” want? Briefly describe what groups of people were more likely to endorse each stance.

8. What was the “Gilded Age”?

9. Why did people tend to vote a “straight ticket” during the Gilded Age?

10.What factors caused people to align with a particular party during this time period?

11. Briefly describe who was most likely to support each of the political parties:

Republicans Democrats

12.What is patronage?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

13.What was the controversy surrounding the Election of 1876?

14.How did the Compromise of 1877 solve the aforementioned election controversy AND end Reconstruction?

15.What did the Civil Rights Act of 1875 do? Why was it declared unconstitutional in 1883?

16.What are Jim Crow laws?

17.What is sharecropping?

18.Describe the causes and outcome of the Plessy v. Ferguson?

19.How did the US government combat the railroad strike in 1877? What did this mean for labor unions?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

20.What did the Chinese Exclusion Act do?

21.Why was Hayes often called “Rutherfraud”?

22.Why was President Arthur assassinated?

23.What did the Pendleton Act do?

24.What did President Cleveland do that angered Mugwumps?

25.Why did Cleveland battle for lower tariffs?

26.Why was the Congress of 1890 called the “Billion Dollar Congress”?

27.What did the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 do?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

28.Why was the Populist Party formed? What was their goal?

29.What caused the Homestead Strike? What was the result?

30.What was the impact of the Populists on the Election of 1892?

31.Who were the “heavy losers” in the Election of 1892? Why?

32.What caused the Depression of 1893? What did President Cleveland do about it?

33.How did Americans respond to how Cleveland acted in response to the Depression of 1893?

Comprehension Questions1. What made politics in the Gilded Age so extremely popular - with over 80 percent voter

participation - yet so often corrupt and unconcerned with important national issues?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

2. What caused the end of Reconstruction? In particular, why did the majority of Republicans abandon their earlier policy of support for black civil rights and voting in the South?

3. What were the results of the Compromise of 1877 for race relations? How did the suppression of blacks through sharecropping and the crop-lien systems depress the economic condition of the South for whites and blacks alike?

4. What caused the rise of the money issue in American politics? What were the backers of greenback and silver money each trying to achieve?

5. What were the causes of political results from the rise of agrarian protest in the 1880s and 1890s? Why were the Populists’ attempts to form a coalition of white and black farmers and industrial workers ultimately unsuccessful?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10

6. White laborers in the West fiercely resisted Chinese immigration, and white farmers in the South turned toward race-baiting rather than forming a populist alliance with black farmers. How and why did racial animosity trump the apparent economic self-interests of these lower-class whites?

7. In what ways did the political conflicts of the Gilded Age still reflect the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction? To what extent did the political leaders of the time address issues of race and sectional conflict, and to what extent did they merely shove them under the rug?

8. Was the apparent failure of the American political system to address the industrial conflicts and racial tensions of the Gilded Age a result of two parties’ poor leadership and narrow self-interest, or was it simply the natural inability of a previously agrarian, local, democratic nation to face up to a modern, national industrial economy?

Mr. Wood (2010)APUSH: Unit 10