Gilded Age Review for AP History

Guess what? You have done such a great job with your AP U.S. History exam review. I want to give you a trophy and you've got a choice. I've got two trophies that look just like this. I'm just playing, but I'm pretending that I'm going to give you a trophy and you've got a choice between two of them. One of them is gilded and one of them is solid gold. So which one would you choose? Of course, you would choose the one that is solid gold because if it's gilded, that means that it's gold. plated and it's not solid all the way through. So of course the one that's solid gold is more valuable. And I bring this up because tonight's topic is time period six, which really focuses a lot on the gilded age, which is the time period that comes after reconstruction. So have you ever thought about why is it called the gilded age? Well, it's called the gilded age because you've got a lot of really great opportunity and a lot of new technology and a lot of new Um, opportunities, a lot of jobs, a lot of prosperity that's taking place in the United States. It's drawing more immigrants to come to the U.S. But under the surface, there are some really unresolved problems. Labor disputes between big business and their workers. You've got issues with race relations. You've got problems with overcrowded cities and pollution. And none of that is really catching people's attention. So that's why it's called the Gilded Age. I'm Dr. Rhonda Webb, and I am so glad that you are here for time period six and our review for AP US history. So let's go ahead and begin our review tonight. And I want us to look at a couple of topics in particular that will be important for us tonight. Obviously, our time period six content, and then we're going to be doing some practice questions with short answer, and then multiple I mean, long essay question and DBQ. So those are going to be our topics. Now, Mr. Pulaski and I have been reading your comments that you've been sending to us in the Google form. And so there are a couple of questions that I want us to address to try to help answer some things for you. One of the questions is always, can you just turn on the live chat? And the answer to that is no, we don't have access to the live chat. That's why we're giving you the Google form that you can send in your comments and your questions that we will address. A number of you have been asking about closed captioning, and from what I understand, there should be a control down at the bottom right part of your YouTube screen that you can turn on the closed captioning, and it should work with the live feed, but if not, when you do the playback, there is definitely a way that, a button that you would push to turn on the closed captioning. There, the question has come up, what about the number of sentences that you would need to have an SAQ answer. And there's no particular sentence number that you need to have, but you need to keep in mind the time constraints that you're going to be writing in. So you want to be very specific in your answer and get to the point. Do you have to restate the question like I've been doing in my samples? No, you don't have to. But to me, it keeps me more focused in what I'm trying to answer. And then a lot of questions about the complexity point in the DBQ and the LEQ rubric. We're going to explain that point tonight. Bottom line, it's going to be a very high level of argument that you develop throughout your essay. You can't point to one sentence and say, there's my complexity. So we want to talk a little bit about that tonight. And then how do you interpret phrases and documents that come from the old English, the colonial passages and those kinds of things? What if you don't understand what they're talking about? Especially because of the style that they're being written in. What I tell my students is if you're caught up in a phrase that you don't understand, skip it and go to the phrases that you do understand. And when you string all that together, you're going to get to the main point of that document. And then how many sentences do I need when I'm using a document in a DBQ? again, it depends. It depends on your writing style. Some of you have a very sophisticated style that is going to lend itself to fewer sentences, but some of you have more basic sentences, which means you're going to have to string more of them together to get the full description of the document implemented in your essay. So I hope that answers some of your questions that you've been sending in. So if you have more questions tonight, here's how you can send those to Mr. Pulaski and I. is through the Google form and you can use this QR code to make that happen. All right, exam format. I know that we go through this every session, but it's important because if you're taking the in-paper version on May the 6th, then you're going to have the traditional exam that has the multiple choice, the short answer. the break in between, and then the two essays, the DBQ and the LEQ. Then if you are taking your exam digitally, same multiple choice, 55 questions in 55 minutes. Then you've got the short answer session, then the document-based question, but instead of the LEQ, you're going to have a second set of short answer questions, and we'll talk more about the style of those in a minute. So let's look a little bit more closely at the content from the Gilded Age, and we know now what that's talking about. Well, one of those underlying issues that's been unresolved is some of the political corruption that's going on in government, in local and city government, and in state government in some ways. A lot of that city government corruption is tied to what are known as political machines, and those were networks of politicians that really worked within their community to maintain influence, and the loyalty of their constituents. And one of the best examples would be Tammany Hall in New York City, and the party boss was Boss Tweed. There was another party boss that was part of Tammany Hall. You may have studied George Washington Plunkett. Either of those would be good examples. But what they would do is government contracts would be given out for different work projects within the city, and then sometimes there would be kickbacks of money There would sometimes be ideas about loyalty for gaining votes. And this was an element of corruption. And it began to be more exposed by, in the case of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, by Thomas Nast. He was one of the famous cartoonists of the Gilded Age. And he really takes on Boss Tweed. If you've never seen any of the Thomas Nast cartoons, I encourage you to look those up because they're just tremendous. One of the other... big features of the Gilded Age is going to be the rise of big business. And there are a number of ways that these big business owners make their vast fortunes in these huge corporations that they build. And it's all about maximizing profits. They can do that a number of ways. They can build monopolies or trusts where you eliminate your competition. And you're the only business in that market that's selling to consumers. So you can do whatever you want to with the price. The problem is, as they're making these huge fortunes. They're not translating those big, big paydays down to their workers. And so there begins to be labor disputes between the big business owners and their workers, as we'll talk about in a few minutes. And then you can look at these very same titans of industry, as they're called sometimes. You can look at them as contributing positively to the community by giving back through charitable good works, offering more jobs to people because of these big businesses, giving consumers There's... more affordable products because of mass production. But then you've also got problems with them taking advantage and putting out of business smaller businesses that can't compete with these big, huge corporations. In that light, you would look at these very same business owners in a negative way and refer to them as robber barons. And so you can definitely see where this could go into a comparison question, where you could be looking at these businesses and comparing whether or not they were positively or negatively impacting. society. Out of all of this corruption, there begins to be this new movement that we call populism that actually begins in the Midwest, in the West, where the farmers are experiencing some economic struggles at the time. They're not able to pay their mortgages in many ways. We've got a downturn in the economy. And they begin to turn to what we call populism. They start with these farmers alliances, which is almost like a labor union for farmers where they're working together. to negotiate contracts with the railroads. And it ends up becoming more of a political party where they start to elect members to local and state legislatures in order to gain influence in what's happening in their state politics. When they go on the national scene, the people's party is populism. If you look at the word populism, it comes from population or of the people. And they write out a statement of what they want to achieve in national politics. And we call that the Omaha platform. And one of the things that they talk about is they want the federal government to come in and regulate the railroads. They want the railroads that were really charging these, you know, incredible rates that weren't equal for everybody using the railroad. They would give deals to some people and not others. They want regulation of the railroads. And then one of the other big things that they want in the People's Party or the Populist Party is something called free silver. And that's what we really need to focus on here in just a second. We'll explain what that is and the money supply. So this difference between big business and labor. Labor unions begin to form in the industrial centers in the north. And some of the major labor unions, the earliest ones, the Knights of Labor, will be more inclusive, skilled labor, unskilled labor. You've got minorities accepted into the Knights of Labor. You've got women involved here as well in this earliest labor union. Then it begins to expand as we are looking at the American Federation of Labor. This is Samuel Gompers comes in and the American Federation of Labor. is going to operate a little bit differently where they can fund a strike. Because what these labor unions are trying to use is what's called collective bargaining. If you've got a business owner who's not giving you fair wages, and you go in and you say, I need a pay raise, at this time, because there's so many more people than there are jobs, then they're going to say bye, and they're going to bring in someone else from the outside to take your place who's willing to work for those low wages. Think about the influx of immigrants who are coming in at this time. You've got all kinds of competition for work. So as the wages are reduced, they're using collective bargaining and their strength in numbers. If the entire factory or labor union goes on strike, then there's going to be less likelihood that the business owners will retaliate against those workers. The American Federation of Labor will fund that in some cases where the dues money that's being paid into the labor union. would pay you at least a small amount of money while you're on strike so that you can continue that for a longer period of time. So it's a little bit more successful than the Knights of Labor, but not as inclusive. And then the American Railway Union will be involved in all elements of the railway industry, from the Pullman Palace cars, those fancy train cars that are being produced in the Pullman factory in Chicago, to the ticket takers and the conductors and all of the people who are constructing the railroads. They would all be part of the American Railway Union. There are some important strikes that you want to make sure that you're familiar with. Haymarket Riot, that's going to be in Chicago. Homestead Steel Strike, that's going to be the one with Andrew Carnegie's plan. And you've got the Pinkertons that are coming in to try to maintain order. And you have strike breakers that are coming through, and it turns somewhat violent. Pullman Strike is one where the entire railroad industry goes on strike in support of the Pullman. workers who were in a factory town, a company town. And when their wages are cut, their rent was not reduced. And so they were really having a hard time. And these labor strikes are trying to put pressure on the business owners to make changes. Doesn't always work out that way. So again, think about during this Gilded Age, these are some of the big problems that are underlying on the surface. And in every one of these strikes, especially during this time period, the government is going to come in on the side of the. the business. We don't begin to see regulation of businesses until we get a little bit farther into the early 1900s. All right, so I mentioned before this idea of free silver, and this was something that the populace were very interested in. They wanted to expand the money supply, and this is something that my students really have a hard time understanding, is something called the gold standard versus free silver, which is what the populace were wanting. The gold standard was the money system, the monetary system that the United States was operating under during this time in the Gilded Age. And with that gold standard, that doesn't mean that the money that people had in their pocket was all solid gold. What it means is the money that's being in circulation in the United States, the value of it is backed by the value of gold that the United States has in its treasury. So if you have the... gold standard, then that means that there is less money in circulation than if we went into what it was called free silver, which is going to back the amount of money that we have in circulation in the United States based on the gold and the silver that the United States has in its treasury. So if we're backing the money by gold and silver, that means we can put more money out there. So we're going to, you know, think about this as the number of dollars that are available. available in the United States. If we're on the gold standard, there are fewer dollars available. And if we're on free silver, which is sometimes called bimetallism, because you have two different precious metals that are backing the money, then there are more dollars out there. But now we need to look at the value of those dollars. If there's less money in circulation, there's fewer dollars out there. That means that each one is worth more. Opposite, if we're looking at free silver, if there are more dollars in circulation, that means that each dollar is worth less. So then we need to translate that into what it means for consumers and what it means for businesses that are selling goods. So if we have less money in circulation and higher value for each dollar, that means the price that you're going to be selling your manufactured goods. or your crop. Now keep that in mind. The money that you're charging for selling your crop, if you're a farmer, the price is going to go down if you're on the gold standard, because the value of each dollar means more. So think about what I'm saying here. If the dollar is worth more, then you don't have to pay as much to buy that same item. But if we're on bimetallism or free silver, then prices are going to go up. because each dollar is worth less. So now if you're a farmer and you've got all of this land and you're growing your crops and you're trying to sell them, you want the price of those crops for what you want, what you're selling your crop for to be as high as possible because your mortgage that you have on your land, right? You've gone in debt to buy this land that you're gonna be a farmer on. And so you need to have the crop value high so that the money that you have coming in is going to be... allowing you to pay off your debt. And the debt that you owe on your land is a fixed amount. So if we're on the gold standard and the prices of your crops go down, then it's going to be more difficult for you to come up with the money that you owe each month to pay your debt. If we're on free silver or bimetallism and prices are higher, then that means there's more money coming into you as the farmer to be able to pay what you owe. on your land. All right. So I know that this is a little complicated, but I wanted to try to explain this. Now let's tie this in to the existing political parties. At the time coming into the Gilded Age, you've got big business that tends to be supported by the Republican Party, or they tend to support the Republican Party. So the gold standard, this would be favorable to businesses, okay? Because their wealth... that they have the value of their wealth is higher. And so this would be something that they would be interested in. So typically, the Republican Party would be supporting the gold standard. The Democratic Party would tend to support free silver. So this tends to be kind of the middle to lower class would have typically aligned with the Democratic Party. All right. So I know that that was a lot, but let's look at where this actually plays out and how this fits in with the the populist party. So in 1892, the populists ran their own candidate for president, and he didn't win, but he gained a few votes and carried a few states out in the West where populism was very important, because that is, again, if we think about the market revolution, that's where the breadbasket is. That's where the farmers are in large numbers. So 1896, we've got William McKinley, the Republican candidate, and look what he is supporting. He wants to stay on that gold standard. He wants a strong protective tariff that's going to protect businesses. And he also has a lot of big businesses supporting him. William Jennings Bryan is going to be the Democratic candidate. But look what he believes in. He believes in free silver or bimetallism. We've heard that before. He's going to give a very famous speech that you probably read in class called the Cross of Gold speech, where he talks about you shall not press down upon the brow of labor. this crown of thorns. And he's talking about the gold standard. You can't force the gold standard on labor, that this is unfair to them. And again, with this cross of gold, this imagery, he's got this religious undertone that's tying that together. Government regulation of railroads and business, that also is something that we've just mentioned. The direct election of senators. So instead of the state legislatures that we already said sometimes had some corruption tied in. He wants the people themselves to be able to directly elect who the two senators will be for their states. And then he also wants to tax the wealthy, because if we're taking in less money by cutting out the tariff, then we want to bring in more money with taxation. So all of these big businesses are supporting William McKinley. But guess who is supporting William Jennings Bryan? The populace, rather than electing their own candidate or nominating their own candidate in 1896, they throw all of their support. support to William Jennings Bryan. And they think that if they can bring in the Democratic vote that's solidly voting in the South at this point, because again, this idea coming after Reconstruction, the Redeemers, the white Southern Democrat voters were all voting Democrat at this time. If they can bring in that Southern vote with the Western vote with the populist and then bring in some of those urban workers in the North, they feel like they have a chance against William McKinley. but it doesn't play out that way. William McKinley wins anyway in 1896. All right, but populism certainly is kind of bringing these issues to the forefront. So let's look at an example. We want to begin to look at how you're going to incorporate all of this content in your writing. And we're going to talk about short answer. And two of the formats for the short answer question On the original version, when you're taking this on paper, you've got the secondary source passages that contradict each other. You've got a primary source image of some sort, and then you've got one that's not stimulus based. These are the two that we're going to focus on today. The secondary source passages, my students have a hard time with these, where you've got two historians that are talking about an issue, and you've got to make some determinations about where they're different and then give some examples that would support each author. and then the images. If you're doing the digital version of the exam, these samples that I'm going to show you will still help you in your format of the exam because you're looking at primary source text, you're looking at primary images, and then you're also looking at a secondary source text. So here are some tips. If you are doing the question that's got the two opposing viewpoints in the short answer question, the two secondary sources that you're comparing, in your answer, You have got to. answer the question. First sentence that you have would identify where the authors are different. And then your second sentence, your evidence for that question, and you'll see what I mean in just a second, is going to summarize the main idea of each author. And so you've got to make sure that you have to show how this relates to the author, right? So for A, you're telling how they're different. And then B and C, you're giving examples that relate to each author. And you'll see that sample in just a second. When you're looking at an image, once again, make sure that you are very, very squarely answering the question and tying it to the image. If you look back at your answer to the SAQ and you've not made any reference to the image itself, you've probably not answered the question. And you'll see what I mean by that in just a second. And then same thing when you're looking at the point of view, an example that we either support. support the point of view of the artist or refute the point of view of the artist, you've got to tie it back in to what's being shown in the image. So these are the two samples that we will be looking at here on my document camera. I took these from AP Classroom, and these are former questions that have been used on the AP exam. So as I've done on previous videos, we are going to use the document camera, and I've come up with a sample answer that I've made up. You can certainly... have different answers, but I want to show you how I've set up the answer. All right, so here's the first question. You've got this passage from Josephson, and you have a passage from H.W. Brands, and the questions, look what they're asking us to do. Briefly explain one major difference between Josephson and Brands, historical interpretations of business leaders who rose to prominence in 1865 to 1900. So this is the time period that we're discussing today, the Gilded Age. And how did these business leaders, when they came to power, the difference, we're looking at what the two authors have to say about them. And we'll read it in just a second. Then the next question, give an example of a person, an event, or a development. And this needs to be very specific. You want a specific example from the time period that will that was not mentioned in the excerpt that could support Josephson's interpretation. And then the third one described, same thing, person, event, or development from the period that would support brands. So here we've got brands, here we have Josephson, and we've got to figure out how they're different. So let's look at the passage. Let's start with Josephson. They were aggressive men. as were the first feudal barons. Sometimes they were lawless in important crises. Nearly all of them tended to act without those established moral principles, which fixed more or less the conduct of the common people of the community. So basically, they're acting in a way that he's saying is immoral, and that's not common for the common man. These men were robber barons. as were their medieval counterparts, the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age. Under their hands, the renovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly. Large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized mode of production. Industrial enterprises became more concentrated, more efficient technically, and essentially cooperative, where they had been purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful. So he's saying, yes, maybe they've made things more efficient. but at what cost? They've done this in a way that is not moral and taking advantage of these commoners. Then H.W. Brands is saying, what really lifted the giants above the rest was the ability to envision where the world or their part of it was going and to act on that vision in a creative way. From the days of Adam Smith, so he was the economist, you may remember him from world history, self-interest has been the acknowledged driving force of capitalism. The secret of the market system is that one person's self-interest can simultaneously serve the interest of others. Buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, investors and entrepreneurs take reciprocal advantage of each other. Success rewards those who can discover or create areas of reciprocity. So if we have success on one side, he's saying that that could create success for others. The larger the area, the greater the success. They were captains of industry, but like officers of volunteer regiments, they held their post at the sufferance of those that led. All right. So now we need to think about how they differ from one another. So I've come up with a sample answer. And so here I've got my college board paper that you're going to, if you're doing this at at school and not digitally, you're going to keep your answer in the box. Make sure that you label your answer. And I want us to think about how I am going about making sure that I'm answering the question. My first sentence needs to identify the topic on which they differ. Don't just go straight in to saying the main idea of Josephson is this, and the main idea of brands is this, and that be your answer because that's not explaining or identifying. what they differ on. So look how I've done this. My first sentence, Josephson and Brands disagree on how big business leaders impacted the larger community. That's what I'm saying is different about them. Then my evidence for answer A, right, go back to what the question asked, how did the two authors differ? Okay. And so I'm saying that they differ in how each how they view big business leaders impacting the community. Now I'm going to say what Josephson believes. Josephson views the business leaders in a negative light and as robber barons. And I need to explain that. Who took advantage of the lower classes. Brands instead, and notice I'm saying instead here because this is something that he does differently, views the same business leaders in a positive light as captains of industry. And what does that mean? What does that mean? that they're a captain of industry. They brought opportunity to consumers and workers by growing large companies. All right. So notice what I've done here. My first sentence, how are they different? I'm coming up with that topic. Then I've got what Josephson says and what Brands is saying. Then for answer or for question B, I was supposed to come up with an idea about how, or a piece of evidence that would support... support Josephson, showing that they were in a negative light. So I'm going to think back to some of those big businessmen that I studied in class. And I'm going to say that J.D. Rockefeller and his use of predatory pricing to build Standard Oil is an example that supports Josephson. So here I've got my answer. This is what I'm saying is my answer, that big business leaders negatively impacted the community. So J.D. Rockefeller and his use of predatory pricing. But I need to define what that is. What is predatory pricing? So now I'm going to explain it, okay? And so by undercutting smaller businesses with predatory pricing that was intended to force the small businesses to close, Rockefeller formed a monopoly and controlled the vast majority of the oil industry. Now I've got to tie this in to how it aligns with what Josephson is saying. That's the... the key here that a lot of students don't do. You have your example, but then you don't bring it back to what Josephson is saying. How or why does this support Josephson? This hurts small businesses who couldn't compete and consumers who had to pay higher prices due to Standard Oil's monopoly, which aligns with Josephson's claim of aggressive and sometimes unfair actions. So I have proven that this example matches up with what Josephson has said. Now I need to do the same thing with an example for brands. And so I'm going to think back to some of those big businesses that may have benefited the community. Andrew Carnegie's charity work to create libraries and support the arts in cities supports brands' positive view of big business leaders. So I'm going to say Carnegie's charity work, which was what? He's going to support the art. He's going to make a lot of libraries. But I need to explain what that is. Okay, so I define it a little bit further. Carnegie's reinvestment of his wealth provided educational opportunities to those who might not have otherwise been able to access it. So this is how it's helping the community. Then I've got to tie it back to brands. This charity work supports brands ideas about success, breeding more success and serve the interest of everyone. Right. So if we are providing education, then that's going to help everyone in the community. All right, so that's how you would use the two passage questions. Then the one that's the image question. So I hope that helps. Now, again, you can certainly go back and pause. the video and then practice these. All right. So here we've got an image and this is a political cartoon and it's called the protectors of industry. And then notice up here, we've got these men and they're sitting on big money bags with millions of dollars, Vanderbilt, Gould, Fields, and then they're all sitting up there fat and happy, but look who is carrying them, all of these laborers, and they are literally on their back. And then It's showing how much they make a week. They only make $5 a week, $7 a week. And then they're here in this ocean of hard times. So look at what the question is asking. So in A, briefly explain the point of view about the economy expressed by the artist. So what does the artist think about this whole economic arrangement? and briefly explain a development in the period that would support the point of view of the artist and then give a development from the period. the period that would challenge or oppose the point of view of the artist. You're going to be doing the same thing that you did with the passages here. You're going to identify, so here, what point of view does the artist have? I'm going to identify that. I'm going to say the artist expresses a negative point of view that opposes the exploitation of workers in the growing industrial capitalist system. So this whole idea of big business, he's got a negative view of it and thinks that they're exploiting the workers. Then I have to explain where did I get this from? How do I know that that's what's being shown in the image? The negative view is shown in the image by workers wading through the water labeled hard times while literally shouldering the vast wealth of the big business leaders like Gould, Vanderbilt, and Fields. Notice that I brought in something specific from the image. That's proving my point. Now I need something that would support and show that businessmen. were exploiting workers. So here I've got a development from the period that supports the artist's point of view would be a lack of support for workers on strike at the Homestead Steel strike. So I'm going to say that these workers were taken advantage of at Homestead Steel. The Pinkertons, and now I've got to explain, how were they not protected? The Pinkertons were called in and there was no government support for the workers. Trying to use collective bargaining to improve their wages and conditions. Then I've got to tie it back to the image, just like we did before. We've got to make sure, if this is my explanation, that the workers were not being protected, how is this shown in the image? This is shown in the image by the artist indicating the low weekly wages that workers had while the owners were resting comfortably on the bags of millions of dollars. So here's my answer. Here I've defined what happened at the Homestead Steel Strike, and then here I've tied it back to the image. All right, now we've got to come up with one that would oppose it. So where could we see that maybe these businessmen weren't taking advantage of or the workers weren't totally on their own and unprotected? So here's my answer. A development from the period that would oppose the artist's point of view. is the federal government's passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the 1890s. Now, I may not remember the exact year that the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed, but I know that it was in this decade. So I'm going to, you know, kind of leave myself some wiggle room there. But I've got to define what the law was. The law made it illegal for the business leaders to be unrestricted in their strategies and business practices. While not necessarily ensuring higher wages for workers, the law would have an effect. on beginning to limit the leadership of these businesses and potentially open up further regulations once their ability to create monopolies was gone. Well, then I was about to run out of time or run out of space, but I have to tie it back to brands. This image shows that business leaders with no, this shows the business leaders with no restrictions at all by the government. All right, so that would be, challenging that idea. All right, so there is a kind of a short overview of some practice with some short answer questions, and I want us to come back and then talk about a few other topics within this time period, and then do some practice with a DBQ and an LEQ. So let's review some more of this information. I hope that this is helping, and I know that we're going fast, but this is Really important to try to tie this together. All right, immigration. We've already mentioned that that picks up during the Gilded Age. You've got two different groups of immigrants coming in. Ellis Island is primarily for the European immigrants that are coming in. And then Angel Island out in San Francisco would be the place where Asian immigrants would be coming in, but usually had a very different experience. Most people trying to come in from Asia at this time are going to be turned away. Part of that's due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was a law that is going to prevent Chinese immigrants from coming into the United States unless they already had a direct relative who is already here, and that would be hard to prove. So what does this do about wages and labor? If we've got more people coming in, especially through Ellis Island in New York, then that's driving down wages. And then we've got crowded housing. So all of that's going to be important at that time as well. Okay, we do have some reform that begins to take place here, some efforts, some movements to try to bring about some of the changes to these problems. The settlement house movement with Jane Addams and Hull House, where you've got a place for assimilation basically to be taking place. The social gospel trying to bring back this idea of morality, driving people's business decisions. And then the women's movement. Again, we already saw in the earlier time period with the Seneca Falls. Now we're going to see more women in the workplace, more higher educational opportunities. And so that kind of changes women from that old cult of. of domesticity where they're tied to that home and that more very limited role that women would have. One of the other big, big issues that comes up in the Gilded Age is this fight for equality for African-Americans. And you're going to have two main leaders in this effort in this early time period, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. And we want to compare them. So comparison always means similarities. and differences. So their similarity would be their goal. They're both looking for equality for African Americans, but they want to achieve it in two different ways. Booker T. Washington is looking for more gradual equality to come about. He believes that if you're trying to force equality and force acceptance on people who don't view African Americans in an equal light, then that's not going to be true equality. He says that through hard work over time, that will happen. And so he is really promoting that through vocational education at the Tuskegee Institute, and then also the Atlanta Compromise Speech at the Cotton States Exposition, where he's really promoting that. And then W.E.B. Du Bois has a different background, where Booker T. Washington was an enslaved person earlier in his life. W.E.B. Du Bois never was, has a more privileged background from the North. So he has a different view, and he's saying all of this equality has already been given to African Americans. With the Reconstruction Amendments, why should there be any more waiting? He's demanding that those rights be honored immediately. All right. So, and then that's going to reinforce the issues, the segregation issues with Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896, saying that separate but equal facilities are okay and authorizes segregation. We've also got more. a conflict with Native Americans. This has been going on since the colonial period, but we're going to see the government being more involved in regulating the lands here with the reservation system and then the Dawes Severalty Act that divides the land into sections given to Native families and then acquires the rest of the land for themselves to build more of those railroads. We're going to see a group of Indian wars that break out. These you've probably studied in your class, the Sand Creek Massacre. The battle at the Little Bighorn, that was with George Custer. And then the battle at Wounded Knee. Then there are efforts at assimilation, the Carlisle School, where they take the young Indian children. They're brought into the boarding schools to be more Americanized through education. And then the ghost dance was resistance to this. And so part of that ghost dance, which was the spiritual movement that was trying to bring back the... control of their native lands, that was going to be targeted by the government. So what role does the Homestead Act have in this? The Homestead Act was that law that is going to provide white Americans with land out in the West if they move there and make improvements to the land. Well, that's encroaching on native lands as well. And so all of these are affecting Indian culture significantly. So let's look at a few more examples. I want us to and Look at the structure of the DBQ and both versions of the test, the digital and the end paper will be writing this essay. And this is the one where you have the documents to answer your question. So we've already gone through these before, the rubrics, and you've got the differences here, the seven point rubric on the DBQ, introductory paragraph. Totally the same with the LEQ and the DBQ. Your evidence, you're coming up with your own evidence on the long essay question. You've got documents that are providing you your evidence on the DBQ. So with those documents, you're going to describe them. You're going to use them as proof of your claims from your thesis. And then you're going to bring in some of that outside sourcing. You know, the interpretation of the document, historical situation, audience purpose, and point of view. Then outside information over here is going to be basically like an LEQ where you're bringing in that the additional information that you know related to one of your body paragraphs. So over here, your evidence, you're creating your evidence, but then you're supporting that evidence with your argument. How are you trying, how are you proving that your claim from the thesis is true based on your evidence? So you've got to explain the how or the why. So support in both of these. How or why is it proving your claim? Historical reasoning is going to be in your topic sentences where you're looking at the style of question, continuity and change over time, comparison with similarities and differences, and then the causation. And you're looking at and identifying what those are that you're proving within your body paragraphs. And then the complexity point. So this is the one that a lot of you have been asking about. And this is really looking at the overall... sophistication of your argument. So if you are bringing in some very unique interpretations of the documents, or if you're bringing in connections across multiple time periods and various themes, and tying that together in a very clear and sophisticated manner, that's going to be complexity. You can't point to one thing and say, this is how you do complexity. It's the style of your argumentation. So What I tell my students is, if you end up with the complexity point, fabulous, but I would much prefer that you really focus on these six other points and really refine those and focus on these five points and really refine those rather than trying to write in a complex way. Because sometimes when you're doing that, you're taking yourself down a road that's going to cost you some of these other points. So really focus on this. And the complexity, again, it's your overall look at your essay and the format of your argumentation that's there. All right. So let's look at a practice DBQ. And this one, again, I took from AP Classroom. And we're not actually going to look at the documents because I wanted you to see how you would group them together. The documents tend to fit together in a format of two and two. and three. So two of them are going to fit together in some way, two of them are going to fit together in some way, and three of them are going to fit together in some way. And so if we look at the question, evaluate the extent to which Reconstruction changed United States society in the period 1865 to 1900. So this is a continuity and change over time, what changes and what remains the same during this time period. So we've got W.M. Dixon, who is saying that African Americans should be given the right to vote. We've got a woman who works in one of the Freedmen's Bureau schools who is saying that, you know, they're successful, but there's a lot of white opposition out there against African Americans going to school. The 14th Amendment, equal protection under the law. You learn that in time period five. We have the North Carolina governor saying that he's not going to tolerate the violence that's going on against African Americans, which shows us that there is violence taking place. We've got Charles Sumner, the radical Republican, saying that absolutely the federal government has got to protect all African Americans. And then we have the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States in their report saying that southern states will no longer protect African American, that they're no, not that they will, but that they aren't protecting African American rights. And so notice that this is 1879. So that's after the end of Reconstruction that ended in 1877 with that compromise. And then we've got George Washington Carver, who's an African-American scholar, scientist, who is working with students at the Tuskegee Institute in the chemistry lab. So can we start to see some connections between some of these documents? We need to look at what changes and what remains the same. So what changes I'm looking at here, educational opportunities. We have a couple of documents that are talking about, you know, here at Tuskegee. We've got the Friedman School. So that's going to be a change. Federal legal protection. We've got the 14th Amendment. We've got one of the senators talking about that there needs to be equal protection. So those would certainly be changes. What remains the same? There's probably still this Southern... resistance to African American equality that's taking place. So I can group these together. This is going to be my first claim, federal legal change. This is my second claim, educational changes. And this is my third claim about something that is a continuity that's racism. So that's how I'm grouping my documents. So then I'm going to plan out my essay. What kind of question is it? Continuity and change over time. And then here I'm going to start planning out which documents go within my various body paragraphs. Now, you're not going to have this planning sheet on the AP exam, but you can certainly jot things down in your test booklet or on paper to plan out your essay. So this was my first claim that I had made from the previous page, my second claim and my third claim. From there, I start going back and I plan out my introduction. So that 411 that Mr. Pulaski is talking about where you've got your contextualization, your four sentences there that are giving the backstory. If we're talking about how Reconstruction changes the United States, I've got to go back a little bit and talk about the background of the slavery debate and probably culminating in the Civil War and how all of that changes. Then my thesis statement. Here we go. Although Reconstruction failed to bring about changes to end racism in southern states. There were significant changes made between 1865 and 1900 in providing African Americans with new educational opportunities and federal legal rights. So I know exactly where I'm going in my essay. I've got one body paragraph that is talking about the failure of Reconstruction. So there was this continuity. Racism continued. I'm going to say in my second body paragraph that there was change in providing African Americans with new educational opportunities. And my third body paragraph about federal legal rights. But then remember that point in the DBQ about outside information? Which one of these body paragraphs do I know something additional that I could add in here? Well, I'm probably going to bring in Plessy versus Ferguson as continued racism that's going to protect segregation. And then we could possibly bring in the 15th Amendment that was alluded to that African Americans should be given the right to vote. All right. So I want to show you a sample paragraph. that looks at how you support an argument. So we're going to do this really quickly as a paragraph that I made up again. So this is not taken from anything in particular other than something that I made up to try to help you see how all of this fits together. So let me try to get this focused a little bit better. All right. So as we look at this, here was my thesis. Although reconstruction failed to bring about changes to end racism in southern states. This is my claim from the thesis that I'm going to be proving in this particular body paragraph. So I would have my contextualization up here. So here is my topic sentence. The topic sentence has to identify which part of the claim from the thesis am I proving in this paragraph. So I'm just bringing it down here again. Racism continued in southern states following Reconstruction. So now I've got my document, and I've got to describe my document. So my description, a report issued in 1879 by the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States criticized the southern states for not protecting the new rights of African Americans only two years after promising to do so at the end of Reconstruction. So this is my summary of the document in my own words, and so I'm going to color code that. That's my description point. Now support. I've got to prove that this is a continuation of racism. So this shows racism continuing in Southern states because this is the key word. Why does it show this? The organization specifically calls out the Democratic Party and the states for ignoring the safety and protection of African-American rights. So that's going to be my justification because they're calling them out and saying that the states are ignoring the safety and protection of African-Americans. Then my sourcing, I'm going to use historical situation. How did the Southern states get back to this? arrangement? Well, the Redeemers were the white Southern Democrats who brought this back in. As a result, the power and number of Redeemers were able to undo the progress made for African American rights during Reconstruction. All right, so that's using my document within the body paragraph. So I hope that that kind of helps you to see how you would use this. The last thing that I want to do here tonight is just really briefly look at how you might plan an LEQ and how you structure it the same way. So look at this question, how and why did relations between the United States and American Indian nations change between 1830 and 1900? So we're talking again about continuity and change over time. When you have an LEQ, You just brainstorm everything you possibly know about Native American relations and just jot them down. So, again, these are just some things that I came up with. From there, you're probably not going to use all these in your essay. You're going to come up with some categories. What changes? I'm saying cultural assimilation increases, federal oversight increases, right? So we've got the Carlisle School and we've got the treaties and the Dawes Severalty Act. But what remains the same is that land acquisition for the United States for economic development continues. It continues on throughout. So how we would plan this out is I would put in my three body paragraphs, what changes and what remains the same. If you only have changes and no continuities, then you need to evaluate which is the most significant change. And then I'm going to bring in my evidence that I'm going to use within those body paragraphs. Now, the question always comes up. How many pieces of outside or how many pieces of evidence do I need in an LEQ? Well, that's up to you. But what I tell my students is I don't see how you can have a body paragraph with no evidence. So you would certainly want to at least have three pieces of evidence to build your body paragraphs and certainly build in a cushion there in case you use one of them incorrectly. So this is kind of what I chose to use for my structure of my LEQ. When you are, again, looking at the rubric. you get all of these points here, same as the DBQ. The difference here is that historical reasoning and where you're going to get that is in your topic sentences. So the structure of your essay is the same as it was in the DBQ. Intro with context and thesis, body paragraph, here's your thesis claim. What are we proving? Just like we looked at on the DBQ. Same thing here, same thing here, and then use your examples and explain how or why it proves that thesis claim. All right, so we've done a lot. And I know we went fast there, but you might wanna go back and watch that portion again. So we've looked at time period six. We've looked at strategies for the secondary source passages and the images and the SAQ. And then we've also looked at how to approach continuity and change over time. You wanna try to find continuities. You wanna try to find changes, but if you only have changes, that's fine, but evaluate them. which means that you're going to identify which is the most significant change to help build your argument. That adds to that sophistication of your argument. Next time, Mr. Pulaski is going to be looking at the first part of time period seven. Time period seven is enormous. It starts with imperialism and goes all the way through World War II. And so we've split that up. He's going to be looking at the first part of time period seven in the next session. And then I'll pick back up with you in the second part of time period seven. So if you've got any questions or comments, please, please, please feel free to put those in the Google form, and we will be glad to look at those. So I'm Dr. Rhonda Webb, and I teach AP U.S. History at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Georgia, and I've enjoyed being with you today. So until next time, keep reading and go make history.

One of them is gilded and one of them is solid gold. So which one would you choose? Of course, you would choose the one that is solid gold because if it's gilded, that means that it's gold. plated and it's not solid all the way through. So of course the one that's solid gold is more valuable.

And I bring this up because tonight's topic is time period six, which really focuses a lot on the gilded age, which is the time period that comes after reconstruction. So have you ever thought about why is it called the gilded age? Well, it's called the gilded age because you've got a lot of really great opportunity and a lot of new technology and a lot of new Um, opportunities, a lot of jobs, a lot of prosperity that's taking place in the United States.

It's drawing more immigrants to come to the U.S. But under the surface, there are some really unresolved problems. Labor disputes between big business and their workers. You've got issues with race relations. You've got problems with overcrowded cities and pollution.

And none of that is really catching people's attention. So that's why it's called the Gilded Age. I'm Dr. Rhonda Webb, and I am so glad that you are here for time period six and our review for AP US history. So let's go ahead and begin our review tonight. And I want us to look at a couple of topics in particular that will be important for us tonight.

Obviously, our time period six content, and then we're going to be doing some practice questions with short answer, and then multiple I mean, long essay question and DBQ. So those are going to be our topics. Now, Mr. Pulaski and I have been reading your comments that you've been sending to us in the Google form. And so there are a couple of questions that I want us to address to try to help answer some things for you.

One of the questions is always, can you just turn on the live chat? And the answer to that is no, we don't have access to the live chat. That's why we're giving you the Google form that you can send in your comments and your questions that we will address.

A number of you have been asking about closed captioning, and from what I understand, there should be a control down at the bottom right part of your YouTube screen that you can turn on the closed captioning, and it should work with the live feed, but if not, when you do the playback, there is definitely a way that, a button that you would push to turn on the closed captioning. There, the question has come up, what about the number of sentences that you would need to have an SAQ answer. And there's no particular sentence number that you need to have, but you need to keep in mind the time constraints that you're going to be writing in. So you want to be very specific in your answer and get to the point. Do you have to restate the question like I've been doing in my samples?

No, you don't have to. But to me, it keeps me more focused in what I'm trying to answer. And then a lot of questions about the complexity point in the DBQ and the LEQ rubric. We're going to explain that point tonight.

Bottom line, it's going to be a very high level of argument that you develop throughout your essay. You can't point to one sentence and say, there's my complexity. So we want to talk a little bit about that tonight. And then how do you interpret phrases and documents that come from the old English, the colonial passages and those kinds of things?

What if you don't understand what they're talking about? Especially because of the style that they're being written in. What I tell my students is if you're caught up in a phrase that you don't understand, skip it and go to the phrases that you do understand.

And when you string all that together, you're going to get to the main point of that document. And then how many sentences do I need when I'm using a document in a DBQ? again, it depends.

It depends on your writing style. Some of you have a very sophisticated style that is going to lend itself to fewer sentences, but some of you have more basic sentences, which means you're going to have to string more of them together to get the full description of the document implemented in your essay. So I hope that answers some of your questions that you've been sending in. So if you have more questions tonight, here's how you can send those to Mr. Pulaski and I. is through the Google form and you can use this QR code to make that happen.

All right, exam format. I know that we go through this every session, but it's important because if you're taking the in-paper version on May the 6th, then you're going to have the traditional exam that has the multiple choice, the short answer. the break in between, and then the two essays, the DBQ and the LEQ.

Then if you are taking your exam digitally, same multiple choice, 55 questions in 55 minutes. Then you've got the short answer session, then the document-based question, but instead of the LEQ, you're going to have a second set of short answer questions, and we'll talk more about the style of those in a minute. So let's look a little bit more closely at the content from the Gilded Age, and we know now what that's talking about. Well, one of those underlying issues that's been unresolved is some of the political corruption that's going on in government, in local and city government, and in state government in some ways. A lot of that city government corruption is tied to what are known as political machines, and those were networks of politicians that really worked within their community to maintain influence, and the loyalty of their constituents.

And one of the best examples would be Tammany Hall in New York City, and the party boss was Boss Tweed. There was another party boss that was part of Tammany Hall. You may have studied George Washington Plunkett. Either of those would be good examples. But what they would do is government contracts would be given out for different work projects within the city, and then sometimes there would be kickbacks of money There would sometimes be ideas about loyalty for gaining votes.

And this was an element of corruption. And it began to be more exposed by, in the case of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, by Thomas Nast. He was one of the famous cartoonists of the Gilded Age.

And he really takes on Boss Tweed. If you've never seen any of the Thomas Nast cartoons, I encourage you to look those up because they're just tremendous. One of the other... big features of the Gilded Age is going to be the rise of big business. And there are a number of ways that these big business owners make their vast fortunes in these huge corporations that they build.

And it's all about maximizing profits. They can do that a number of ways. They can build monopolies or trusts where you eliminate your competition.

And you're the only business in that market that's selling to consumers. So you can do whatever you want to with the price. The problem is, as they're making these huge fortunes.

They're not translating those big, big paydays down to their workers. And so there begins to be labor disputes between the big business owners and their workers, as we'll talk about in a few minutes. And then you can look at these very same titans of industry, as they're called sometimes.

You can look at them as contributing positively to the community by giving back through charitable good works, offering more jobs to people because of these big businesses, giving consumers There's... more affordable products because of mass production. But then you've also got problems with them taking advantage and putting out of business smaller businesses that can't compete with these big, huge corporations.

In that light, you would look at these very same business owners in a negative way and refer to them as robber barons. And so you can definitely see where this could go into a comparison question, where you could be looking at these businesses and comparing whether or not they were positively or negatively impacting. society.

Out of all of this corruption, there begins to be this new movement that we call populism that actually begins in the Midwest, in the West, where the farmers are experiencing some economic struggles at the time. They're not able to pay their mortgages in many ways. We've got a downturn in the economy.

And they begin to turn to what we call populism. They start with these farmers alliances, which is almost like a labor union for farmers where they're working together. to negotiate contracts with the railroads.

And it ends up becoming more of a political party where they start to elect members to local and state legislatures in order to gain influence in what's happening in their state politics. When they go on the national scene, the people's party is populism. If you look at the word populism, it comes from population or of the people.

And they write out a statement of what they want to achieve in national politics. And we call that the Omaha platform. And one of the things that they talk about is they want the federal government to come in and regulate the railroads. They want the railroads that were really charging these, you know, incredible rates that weren't equal for everybody using the railroad.

They would give deals to some people and not others. They want regulation of the railroads. And then one of the other big things that they want in the People's Party or the Populist Party is something called free silver. And that's what we really need to focus on here in just a second.

We'll explain what that is and the money supply. So this difference between big business and labor. Labor unions begin to form in the industrial centers in the north. And some of the major labor unions, the earliest ones, the Knights of Labor, will be more inclusive, skilled labor, unskilled labor. You've got minorities accepted into the Knights of Labor.

You've got women involved here as well in this earliest labor union. Then it begins to expand as we are looking at the American Federation of Labor. This is Samuel Gompers comes in and the American Federation of Labor. is going to operate a little bit differently where they can fund a strike. Because what these labor unions are trying to use is what's called collective bargaining.

If you've got a business owner who's not giving you fair wages, and you go in and you say, I need a pay raise, at this time, because there's so many more people than there are jobs, then they're going to say bye, and they're going to bring in someone else from the outside to take your place who's willing to work for those low wages. Think about the influx of immigrants who are coming in at this time. You've got all kinds of competition for work. So as the wages are reduced, they're using collective bargaining and their strength in numbers. If the entire factory or labor union goes on strike, then there's going to be less likelihood that the business owners will retaliate against those workers.

The American Federation of Labor will fund that in some cases where the dues money that's being paid into the labor union. would pay you at least a small amount of money while you're on strike so that you can continue that for a longer period of time. So it's a little bit more successful than the Knights of Labor, but not as inclusive.

And then the American Railway Union will be involved in all elements of the railway industry, from the Pullman Palace cars, those fancy train cars that are being produced in the Pullman factory in Chicago, to the ticket takers and the conductors and all of the people who are constructing the railroads. They would all be part of the American Railway Union. There are some important strikes that you want to make sure that you're familiar with. Haymarket Riot, that's going to be in Chicago.

Homestead Steel Strike, that's going to be the one with Andrew Carnegie's plan. And you've got the Pinkertons that are coming in to try to maintain order. And you have strike breakers that are coming through, and it turns somewhat violent.

Pullman Strike is one where the entire railroad industry goes on strike in support of the Pullman. workers who were in a factory town, a company town. And when their wages are cut, their rent was not reduced. And so they were really having a hard time. And these labor strikes are trying to put pressure on the business owners to make changes.

Doesn't always work out that way. So again, think about during this Gilded Age, these are some of the big problems that are underlying on the surface. And in every one of these strikes, especially during this time period, the government is going to come in on the side of the.

the business. We don't begin to see regulation of businesses until we get a little bit farther into the early 1900s. All right, so I mentioned before this idea of free silver, and this was something that the populace were very interested in.

They wanted to expand the money supply, and this is something that my students really have a hard time understanding, is something called the gold standard versus free silver, which is what the populace were wanting. The gold standard was the money system, the monetary system that the United States was operating under during this time in the Gilded Age. And with that gold standard, that doesn't mean that the money that people had in their pocket was all solid gold.

What it means is the money that's being in circulation in the United States, the value of it is backed by the value of gold that the United States has in its treasury. So if you have the... gold standard, then that means that there is less money in circulation than if we went into what it was called free silver, which is going to back the amount of money that we have in circulation in the United States based on the gold and the silver that the United States has in its treasury.

So if we're backing the money by gold and silver, that means we can put more money out there. So we're going to, you know, think about this as the number of dollars that are available. available in the United States. If we're on the gold standard, there are fewer dollars available.

And if we're on free silver, which is sometimes called bimetallism, because you have two different precious metals that are backing the money, then there are more dollars out there. But now we need to look at the value of those dollars. If there's less money in circulation, there's fewer dollars out there. That means that each one is worth more. Opposite, if we're looking at free silver, if there are more dollars in circulation, that means that each dollar is worth less.

So then we need to translate that into what it means for consumers and what it means for businesses that are selling goods. So if we have less money in circulation and higher value for each dollar, that means the price that you're going to be selling your manufactured goods. or your crop.

Now keep that in mind. The money that you're charging for selling your crop, if you're a farmer, the price is going to go down if you're on the gold standard, because the value of each dollar means more. So think about what I'm saying here.

If the dollar is worth more, then you don't have to pay as much to buy that same item. But if we're on bimetallism or free silver, then prices are going to go up. because each dollar is worth less. So now if you're a farmer and you've got all of this land and you're growing your crops and you're trying to sell them, you want the price of those crops for what you want, what you're selling your crop for to be as high as possible because your mortgage that you have on your land, right? You've gone in debt to buy this land that you're gonna be a farmer on.

And so you need to have the crop value high so that the money that you have coming in is going to be... allowing you to pay off your debt. And the debt that you owe on your land is a fixed amount. So if we're on the gold standard and the prices of your crops go down, then it's going to be more difficult for you to come up with the money that you owe each month to pay your debt.

If we're on free silver or bimetallism and prices are higher, then that means there's more money coming into you as the farmer to be able to pay what you owe. on your land. All right. So I know that this is a little complicated, but I wanted to try to explain this. Now let's tie this in to the existing political parties.

At the time coming into the Gilded Age, you've got big business that tends to be supported by the Republican Party, or they tend to support the Republican Party. So the gold standard, this would be favorable to businesses, okay? Because their wealth... that they have the value of their wealth is higher. And so this would be something that they would be interested in.

So typically, the Republican Party would be supporting the gold standard. The Democratic Party would tend to support free silver. So this tends to be kind of the middle to lower class would have typically aligned with the Democratic Party.

All right. So I know that that was a lot, but let's look at where this actually plays out and how this fits in with the the populist party. So in 1892, the populists ran their own candidate for president, and he didn't win, but he gained a few votes and carried a few states out in the West where populism was very important, because that is, again, if we think about the market revolution, that's where the breadbasket is.

That's where the farmers are in large numbers. So 1896, we've got William McKinley, the Republican candidate, and look what he is supporting. He wants to stay on that gold standard. He wants a strong protective tariff that's going to protect businesses. And he also has a lot of big businesses supporting him.

William Jennings Bryan is going to be the Democratic candidate. But look what he believes in. He believes in free silver or bimetallism.

We've heard that before. He's going to give a very famous speech that you probably read in class called the Cross of Gold speech, where he talks about you shall not press down upon the brow of labor. this crown of thorns.

And he's talking about the gold standard. You can't force the gold standard on labor, that this is unfair to them. And again, with this cross of gold, this imagery, he's got this religious undertone that's tying that together.

Government regulation of railroads and business, that also is something that we've just mentioned. The direct election of senators. So instead of the state legislatures that we already said sometimes had some corruption tied in. He wants the people themselves to be able to directly elect who the two senators will be for their states. And then he also wants to tax the wealthy, because if we're taking in less money by cutting out the tariff, then we want to bring in more money with taxation.

So all of these big businesses are supporting William McKinley. But guess who is supporting William Jennings Bryan? The populace, rather than electing their own candidate or nominating their own candidate in 1896, they throw all of their support.

support to William Jennings Bryan. And they think that if they can bring in the Democratic vote that's solidly voting in the South at this point, because again, this idea coming after Reconstruction, the Redeemers, the white Southern Democrat voters were all voting Democrat at this time. If they can bring in that Southern vote with the Western vote with the populist and then bring in some of those urban workers in the North, they feel like they have a chance against William McKinley. but it doesn't play out that way.

William McKinley wins anyway in 1896. All right, but populism certainly is kind of bringing these issues to the forefront. So let's look at an example. We want to begin to look at how you're going to incorporate all of this content in your writing.

And we're going to talk about short answer. And two of the formats for the short answer question On the original version, when you're taking this on paper, you've got the secondary source passages that contradict each other. You've got a primary source image of some sort, and then you've got one that's not stimulus based. These are the two that we're going to focus on today.

The secondary source passages, my students have a hard time with these, where you've got two historians that are talking about an issue, and you've got to make some determinations about where they're different and then give some examples that would support each author. and then the images. If you're doing the digital version of the exam, these samples that I'm going to show you will still help you in your format of the exam because you're looking at primary source text, you're looking at primary images, and then you're also looking at a secondary source text.

So here are some tips. If you are doing the question that's got the two opposing viewpoints in the short answer question, the two secondary sources that you're comparing, in your answer, You have got to. answer the question.

First sentence that you have would identify where the authors are different. And then your second sentence, your evidence for that question, and you'll see what I mean in just a second, is going to summarize the main idea of each author. And so you've got to make sure that you have to show how this relates to the author, right?

So for A, you're telling how they're different. And then B and C, you're giving examples that relate to each author. And you'll see that sample in just a second. When you're looking at an image, once again, make sure that you are very, very squarely answering the question and tying it to the image. If you look back at your answer to the SAQ and you've not made any reference to the image itself, you've probably not answered the question.

And you'll see what I mean by that in just a second. And then same thing when you're looking at the point of view, an example that we either support. support the point of view of the artist or refute the point of view of the artist, you've got to tie it back in to what's being shown in the image. So these are the two samples that we will be looking at here on my document camera. I took these from AP Classroom, and these are former questions that have been used on the AP exam.

So as I've done on previous videos, we are going to use the document camera, and I've come up with a sample answer that I've made up. You can certainly... have different answers, but I want to show you how I've set up the answer.

All right, so here's the first question. You've got this passage from Josephson, and you have a passage from H.W. Brands, and the questions, look what they're asking us to do. Briefly explain one major difference between Josephson and Brands, historical interpretations of business leaders who rose to prominence in 1865 to 1900. So this is the time period that we're discussing today, the Gilded Age.

And how did these business leaders, when they came to power, the difference, we're looking at what the two authors have to say about them. And we'll read it in just a second. Then the next question, give an example of a person, an event, or a development.

And this needs to be very specific. You want a specific example from the time period that will that was not mentioned in the excerpt that could support Josephson's interpretation. And then the third one described, same thing, person, event, or development from the period that would support brands. So here we've got brands, here we have Josephson, and we've got to figure out how they're different.

So let's look at the passage. Let's start with Josephson. They were aggressive men.

as were the first feudal barons. Sometimes they were lawless in important crises. Nearly all of them tended to act without those established moral principles, which fixed more or less the conduct of the common people of the community.

So basically, they're acting in a way that he's saying is immoral, and that's not common for the common man. These men were robber barons. as were their medieval counterparts, the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.

Under their hands, the renovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly. Large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized mode of production. Industrial enterprises became more concentrated, more efficient technically, and essentially cooperative, where they had been purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful.

So he's saying, yes, maybe they've made things more efficient. but at what cost? They've done this in a way that is not moral and taking advantage of these commoners. Then H.W. Brands is saying, what really lifted the giants above the rest was the ability to envision where the world or their part of it was going and to act on that vision in a creative way. From the days of Adam Smith, so he was the economist, you may remember him from world history, self-interest has been the acknowledged driving force of capitalism.

The secret of the market system is that one person's self-interest can simultaneously serve the interest of others. Buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, investors and entrepreneurs take reciprocal advantage of each other. Success rewards those who can discover or create areas of reciprocity. So if we have success on one side, he's saying that that could create success for others. The larger the area, the greater the success.

They were captains of industry, but like officers of volunteer regiments, they held their post at the sufferance of those that led. All right. So now we need to think about how they differ from one another.

So I've come up with a sample answer. And so here I've got my college board paper that you're going to, if you're doing this at at school and not digitally, you're going to keep your answer in the box. Make sure that you label your answer.

And I want us to think about how I am going about making sure that I'm answering the question. My first sentence needs to identify the topic on which they differ. Don't just go straight in to saying the main idea of Josephson is this, and the main idea of brands is this, and that be your answer because that's not explaining or identifying.

what they differ on. So look how I've done this. My first sentence, Josephson and Brands disagree on how big business leaders impacted the larger community. That's what I'm saying is different about them. Then my evidence for answer A, right, go back to what the question asked, how did the two authors differ?

Okay. And so I'm saying that they differ in how each how they view big business leaders impacting the community. Now I'm going to say what Josephson believes.

Josephson views the business leaders in a negative light and as robber barons. And I need to explain that. Who took advantage of the lower classes.

Brands instead, and notice I'm saying instead here because this is something that he does differently, views the same business leaders in a positive light as captains of industry. And what does that mean? What does that mean? that they're a captain of industry.

They brought opportunity to consumers and workers by growing large companies. All right. So notice what I've done here.

My first sentence, how are they different? I'm coming up with that topic. Then I've got what Josephson says and what Brands is saying.

Then for answer or for question B, I was supposed to come up with an idea about how, or a piece of evidence that would support... support Josephson, showing that they were in a negative light. So I'm going to think back to some of those big businessmen that I studied in class. And I'm going to say that J.D.

Rockefeller and his use of predatory pricing to build Standard Oil is an example that supports Josephson. So here I've got my answer. This is what I'm saying is my answer, that big business leaders negatively impacted the community.

So J.D. Rockefeller and his use of predatory pricing. But I need to define what that is. What is predatory pricing?

So now I'm going to explain it, okay? And so by undercutting smaller businesses with predatory pricing that was intended to force the small businesses to close, Rockefeller formed a monopoly and controlled the vast majority of the oil industry. Now I've got to tie this in to how it aligns with what Josephson is saying.

That's the... the key here that a lot of students don't do. You have your example, but then you don't bring it back to what Josephson is saying. How or why does this support Josephson?

This hurts small businesses who couldn't compete and consumers who had to pay higher prices due to Standard Oil's monopoly, which aligns with Josephson's claim of aggressive and sometimes unfair actions. So I have proven that this example matches up with what Josephson has said. Now I need to do the same thing with an example for brands. And so I'm going to think back to some of those big businesses that may have benefited the community.

Andrew Carnegie's charity work to create libraries and support the arts in cities supports brands' positive view of big business leaders. So I'm going to say Carnegie's charity work, which was what? He's going to support the art.

He's going to make a lot of libraries. But I need to explain what that is. Okay, so I define it a little bit further.

Carnegie's reinvestment of his wealth provided educational opportunities to those who might not have otherwise been able to access it. So this is how it's helping the community. Then I've got to tie it back to brands. This charity work supports brands ideas about success, breeding more success and serve the interest of everyone. Right.

So if we are providing education, then that's going to help everyone in the community. All right, so that's how you would use the two passage questions. Then the one that's the image question.

So I hope that helps. Now, again, you can certainly go back and pause. the video and then practice these. All right.

So here we've got an image and this is a political cartoon and it's called the protectors of industry. And then notice up here, we've got these men and they're sitting on big money bags with millions of dollars, Vanderbilt, Gould, Fields, and then they're all sitting up there fat and happy, but look who is carrying them, all of these laborers, and they are literally on their back. And then It's showing how much they make a week. They only make $5 a week, $7 a week.

And then they're here in this ocean of hard times. So look at what the question is asking. So in A, briefly explain the point of view about the economy expressed by the artist.

So what does the artist think about this whole economic arrangement? and briefly explain a development in the period that would support the point of view of the artist and then give a development from the period. the period that would challenge or oppose the point of view of the artist.

You're going to be doing the same thing that you did with the passages here. You're going to identify, so here, what point of view does the artist have? I'm going to identify that. I'm going to say the artist expresses a negative point of view that opposes the exploitation of workers in the growing industrial capitalist system.

So this whole idea of big business, he's got a negative view of it and thinks that they're exploiting the workers. Then I have to explain where did I get this from? How do I know that that's what's being shown in the image?

The negative view is shown in the image by workers wading through the water labeled hard times while literally shouldering the vast wealth of the big business leaders like Gould, Vanderbilt, and Fields. Notice that I brought in something specific from the image. That's proving my point.

Now I need something that would support and show that businessmen. were exploiting workers. So here I've got a development from the period that supports the artist's point of view would be a lack of support for workers on strike at the Homestead Steel strike. So I'm going to say that these workers were taken advantage of at Homestead Steel.

The Pinkertons, and now I've got to explain, how were they not protected? The Pinkertons were called in and there was no government support for the workers. Trying to use collective bargaining to improve their wages and conditions. Then I've got to tie it back to the image, just like we did before. We've got to make sure, if this is my explanation, that the workers were not being protected, how is this shown in the image?

This is shown in the image by the artist indicating the low weekly wages that workers had while the owners were resting comfortably on the bags of millions of dollars. So here's my answer. Here I've defined what happened at the Homestead Steel Strike, and then here I've tied it back to the image.

All right, now we've got to come up with one that would oppose it. So where could we see that maybe these businessmen weren't taking advantage of or the workers weren't totally on their own and unprotected? So here's my answer. A development from the period that would oppose the artist's point of view. is the federal government's passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the 1890s.

Now, I may not remember the exact year that the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed, but I know that it was in this decade. So I'm going to, you know, kind of leave myself some wiggle room there. But I've got to define what the law was.

The law made it illegal for the business leaders to be unrestricted in their strategies and business practices. While not necessarily ensuring higher wages for workers, the law would have an effect. on beginning to limit the leadership of these businesses and potentially open up further regulations once their ability to create monopolies was gone. Well, then I was about to run out of time or run out of space, but I have to tie it back to brands.

This image shows that business leaders with no, this shows the business leaders with no restrictions at all by the government. All right, so that would be, challenging that idea. All right, so there is a kind of a short overview of some practice with some short answer questions, and I want us to come back and then talk about a few other topics within this time period, and then do some practice with a DBQ and an LEQ. So let's review some more of this information.

I hope that this is helping, and I know that we're going fast, but this is Really important to try to tie this together. All right, immigration. We've already mentioned that that picks up during the Gilded Age.

You've got two different groups of immigrants coming in. Ellis Island is primarily for the European immigrants that are coming in. And then Angel Island out in San Francisco would be the place where Asian immigrants would be coming in, but usually had a very different experience. Most people trying to come in from Asia at this time are going to be turned away.

Part of that's due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was a law that is going to prevent Chinese immigrants from coming into the United States unless they already had a direct relative who is already here, and that would be hard to prove. So what does this do about wages and labor? If we've got more people coming in, especially through Ellis Island in New York, then that's driving down wages. And then we've got crowded housing.

So all of that's going to be important at that time as well. Okay, we do have some reform that begins to take place here, some efforts, some movements to try to bring about some of the changes to these problems. The settlement house movement with Jane Addams and Hull House, where you've got a place for assimilation basically to be taking place.

The social gospel trying to bring back this idea of morality, driving people's business decisions. And then the women's movement. Again, we already saw in the earlier time period with the Seneca Falls. Now we're going to see more women in the workplace, more higher educational opportunities. And so that kind of changes women from that old cult of.

of domesticity where they're tied to that home and that more very limited role that women would have. One of the other big, big issues that comes up in the Gilded Age is this fight for equality for African-Americans. And you're going to have two main leaders in this effort in this early time period, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

And we want to compare them. So comparison always means similarities. and differences.

So their similarity would be their goal. They're both looking for equality for African Americans, but they want to achieve it in two different ways. Booker T. Washington is looking for more gradual equality to come about.

He believes that if you're trying to force equality and force acceptance on people who don't view African Americans in an equal light, then that's not going to be true equality. He says that through hard work over time, that will happen. And so he is really promoting that through vocational education at the Tuskegee Institute, and then also the Atlanta Compromise Speech at the Cotton States Exposition, where he's really promoting that.

And then W.E.B. Du Bois has a different background, where Booker T. Washington was an enslaved person earlier in his life. W.E.B. Du Bois never was, has a more privileged background from the North. So he has a different view, and he's saying all of this equality has already been given to African Americans. With the Reconstruction Amendments, why should there be any more waiting? He's demanding that those rights be honored immediately.

All right. So, and then that's going to reinforce the issues, the segregation issues with Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896, saying that separate but equal facilities are okay and authorizes segregation. We've also got more.

a conflict with Native Americans. This has been going on since the colonial period, but we're going to see the government being more involved in regulating the lands here with the reservation system and then the Dawes Severalty Act that divides the land into sections given to Native families and then acquires the rest of the land for themselves to build more of those railroads. We're going to see a group of Indian wars that break out. These you've probably studied in your class, the Sand Creek Massacre.

The battle at the Little Bighorn, that was with George Custer. And then the battle at Wounded Knee. Then there are efforts at assimilation, the Carlisle School, where they take the young Indian children. They're brought into the boarding schools to be more Americanized through education.

And then the ghost dance was resistance to this. And so part of that ghost dance, which was the spiritual movement that was trying to bring back the... control of their native lands, that was going to be targeted by the government.

So what role does the Homestead Act have in this? The Homestead Act was that law that is going to provide white Americans with land out in the West if they move there and make improvements to the land. Well, that's encroaching on native lands as well. And so all of these are affecting Indian culture significantly. So let's look at a few more examples.

I want us to and Look at the structure of the DBQ and both versions of the test, the digital and the end paper will be writing this essay. And this is the one where you have the documents to answer your question. So we've already gone through these before, the rubrics, and you've got the differences here, the seven point rubric on the DBQ, introductory paragraph. Totally the same with the LEQ and the DBQ.

Your evidence, you're coming up with your own evidence on the long essay question. You've got documents that are providing you your evidence on the DBQ. So with those documents, you're going to describe them. You're going to use them as proof of your claims from your thesis.

And then you're going to bring in some of that outside sourcing. You know, the interpretation of the document, historical situation, audience purpose, and point of view. Then outside information over here is going to be basically like an LEQ where you're bringing in that the additional information that you know related to one of your body paragraphs.

So over here, your evidence, you're creating your evidence, but then you're supporting that evidence with your argument. How are you trying, how are you proving that your claim from the thesis is true based on your evidence? So you've got to explain the how or the why.

So support in both of these. How or why is it proving your claim? Historical reasoning is going to be in your topic sentences where you're looking at the style of question, continuity and change over time, comparison with similarities and differences, and then the causation. And you're looking at and identifying what those are that you're proving within your body paragraphs.

And then the complexity point. So this is the one that a lot of you have been asking about. And this is really looking at the overall... sophistication of your argument.

So if you are bringing in some very unique interpretations of the documents, or if you're bringing in connections across multiple time periods and various themes, and tying that together in a very clear and sophisticated manner, that's going to be complexity. You can't point to one thing and say, this is how you do complexity. It's the style of your argumentation. So What I tell my students is, if you end up with the complexity point, fabulous, but I would much prefer that you really focus on these six other points and really refine those and focus on these five points and really refine those rather than trying to write in a complex way. Because sometimes when you're doing that, you're taking yourself down a road that's going to cost you some of these other points.

So really focus on this. And the complexity, again, it's your overall look at your essay and the format of your argumentation that's there. All right. So let's look at a practice DBQ. And this one, again, I took from AP Classroom.

And we're not actually going to look at the documents because I wanted you to see how you would group them together. The documents tend to fit together in a format of two and two. and three. So two of them are going to fit together in some way, two of them are going to fit together in some way, and three of them are going to fit together in some way.

And so if we look at the question, evaluate the extent to which Reconstruction changed United States society in the period 1865 to 1900. So this is a continuity and change over time, what changes and what remains the same during this time period. So we've got W.M. Dixon, who is saying that African Americans should be given the right to vote. We've got a woman who works in one of the Freedmen's Bureau schools who is saying that, you know, they're successful, but there's a lot of white opposition out there against African Americans going to school.

The 14th Amendment, equal protection under the law. You learn that in time period five. We have the North Carolina governor saying that he's not going to tolerate the violence that's going on against African Americans, which shows us that there is violence taking place. We've got Charles Sumner, the radical Republican, saying that absolutely the federal government has got to protect all African Americans. And then we have the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States in their report saying that southern states will no longer protect African American, that they're no, not that they will, but that they aren't protecting African American rights.

And so notice that this is 1879. So that's after the end of Reconstruction that ended in 1877 with that compromise. And then we've got George Washington Carver, who's an African-American scholar, scientist, who is working with students at the Tuskegee Institute in the chemistry lab. So can we start to see some connections between some of these documents?

We need to look at what changes and what remains the same. So what changes I'm looking at here, educational opportunities. We have a couple of documents that are talking about, you know, here at Tuskegee.

We've got the Friedman School. So that's going to be a change. Federal legal protection.

We've got the 14th Amendment. We've got one of the senators talking about that there needs to be equal protection. So those would certainly be changes.

What remains the same? There's probably still this Southern... resistance to African American equality that's taking place. So I can group these together. This is going to be my first claim, federal legal change.

This is my second claim, educational changes. And this is my third claim about something that is a continuity that's racism. So that's how I'm grouping my documents. So then I'm going to plan out my essay. What kind of question is it?

Continuity and change over time. And then here I'm going to start planning out which documents go within my various body paragraphs. Now, you're not going to have this planning sheet on the AP exam, but you can certainly jot things down in your test booklet or on paper to plan out your essay. So this was my first claim that I had made from the previous page, my second claim and my third claim.

From there, I start going back and I plan out my introduction. So that 411 that Mr. Pulaski is talking about where you've got your contextualization, your four sentences there that are giving the backstory. If we're talking about how Reconstruction changes the United States, I've got to go back a little bit and talk about the background of the slavery debate and probably culminating in the Civil War and how all of that changes.

Then my thesis statement. Here we go. Although Reconstruction failed to bring about changes to end racism in southern states.

There were significant changes made between 1865 and 1900 in providing African Americans with new educational opportunities and federal legal rights. So I know exactly where I'm going in my essay. I've got one body paragraph that is talking about the failure of Reconstruction. So there was this continuity. Racism continued.

I'm going to say in my second body paragraph that there was change in providing African Americans with new educational opportunities. And my third body paragraph about federal legal rights. But then remember that point in the DBQ about outside information?

Which one of these body paragraphs do I know something additional that I could add in here? Well, I'm probably going to bring in Plessy versus Ferguson as continued racism that's going to protect segregation. And then we could possibly bring in the 15th Amendment that was alluded to that African Americans should be given the right to vote.

All right. So I want to show you a sample paragraph. that looks at how you support an argument.

So we're going to do this really quickly as a paragraph that I made up again. So this is not taken from anything in particular other than something that I made up to try to help you see how all of this fits together. So let me try to get this focused a little bit better. All right. So as we look at this, here was my thesis.

Although reconstruction failed to bring about changes to end racism in southern states. This is my claim from the thesis that I'm going to be proving in this particular body paragraph. So I would have my contextualization up here.

So here is my topic sentence. The topic sentence has to identify which part of the claim from the thesis am I proving in this paragraph. So I'm just bringing it down here again. Racism continued in southern states following Reconstruction.

So now I've got my document, and I've got to describe my document. So my description, a report issued in 1879 by the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States criticized the southern states for not protecting the new rights of African Americans only two years after promising to do so at the end of Reconstruction. So this is my summary of the document in my own words, and so I'm going to color code that. That's my description point. Now support.

I've got to prove that this is a continuation of racism. So this shows racism continuing in Southern states because this is the key word. Why does it show this? The organization specifically calls out the Democratic Party and the states for ignoring the safety and protection of African-American rights. So that's going to be my justification because they're calling them out and saying that the states are ignoring the safety and protection of African-Americans.

Then my sourcing, I'm going to use historical situation. How did the Southern states get back to this? arrangement?

Well, the Redeemers were the white Southern Democrats who brought this back in. As a result, the power and number of Redeemers were able to undo the progress made for African American rights during Reconstruction. All right, so that's using my document within the body paragraph. So I hope that that kind of helps you to see how you would use this.

The last thing that I want to do here tonight is just really briefly look at how you might plan an LEQ and how you structure it the same way. So look at this question, how and why did relations between the United States and American Indian nations change between 1830 and 1900? So we're talking again about continuity and change over time. When you have an LEQ, You just brainstorm everything you possibly know about Native American relations and just jot them down. So, again, these are just some things that I came up with.

From there, you're probably not going to use all these in your essay. You're going to come up with some categories. What changes? I'm saying cultural assimilation increases, federal oversight increases, right? So we've got the Carlisle School and we've got the treaties and the Dawes Severalty Act.

But what remains the same is that land acquisition for the United States for economic development continues. It continues on throughout. So how we would plan this out is I would put in my three body paragraphs, what changes and what remains the same. If you only have changes and no continuities, then you need to evaluate which is the most significant change.

And then I'm going to bring in my evidence that I'm going to use within those body paragraphs. Now, the question always comes up. How many pieces of outside or how many pieces of evidence do I need in an LEQ? Well, that's up to you. But what I tell my students is I don't see how you can have a body paragraph with no evidence.

So you would certainly want to at least have three pieces of evidence to build your body paragraphs and certainly build in a cushion there in case you use one of them incorrectly. So this is kind of what I chose to use for my structure of my LEQ. When you are, again, looking at the rubric.

you get all of these points here, same as the DBQ. The difference here is that historical reasoning and where you're going to get that is in your topic sentences. So the structure of your essay is the same as it was in the DBQ.

Intro with context and thesis, body paragraph, here's your thesis claim. What are we proving? Just like we looked at on the DBQ.

Same thing here, same thing here, and then use your examples and explain how or why it proves that thesis claim. All right, so we've done a lot. And I know we went fast there, but you might wanna go back and watch that portion again.

So we've looked at time period six. We've looked at strategies for the secondary source passages and the images and the SAQ. And then we've also looked at how to approach continuity and change over time.

You wanna try to find continuities. You wanna try to find changes, but if you only have changes, that's fine, but evaluate them. which means that you're going to identify which is the most significant change to help build your argument.

That adds to that sophistication of your argument. Next time, Mr. Pulaski is going to be looking at the first part of time period seven. Time period seven is enormous.

It starts with imperialism and goes all the way through World War II. And so we've split that up. He's going to be looking at the first part of time period seven in the next session.

And then I'll pick back up with you in the second part of time period seven. So if you've got any questions or comments, please, please, please feel free to put those in the Google form, and we will be glad to look at those. So I'm Dr. Rhonda Webb, and I teach AP U.S. History at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Georgia, and I've enjoyed being with you today.

So until next time, keep reading and go make history.

Transcript for:Gilded Age Review for AP History

Transcript for:
Gilded Age Review for AP History