• Describe how public authorities at all levels (city, state, and national) responded to the problems of industrialization and urbanization during the Gilded Age. Assess their ability to deal with these problems.

• Discuss the reasons workers turned to national unions in the decades following the Civil War, as well as the differing political and organizational strategies of the National Labor Union, the Knights of Labor, and the American

Federation of Labor. Also discuss other strategies used by workers, including political parties and strikes.

• Detail the progress of the women’s suffrage movement between Reconstruction and 1900, including changing arguments for and against women’s suffrage.

• Outline the constituencies of the two major parties during the Gilded Age, as well as their positions on key issues.

• Describe the major causes and consequences of the Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the reasons for its ultimate demise.

• Discuss the concept of "laissez-faire constitutionalism," and explain how it was applied by federal judges in the late nineteenth century.

1866 National Labor Union founded.

1867 National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry founded.

1868 Fourteenth Amendment explicitly restricts suffrage to males.

1869 Knights of Labor founded.

1873 Congress passes the Coinage Act, terminating the minting of silver dollars.

1874 Greenback Party organized.

1875 Congress passes the Resumption Act.

Supreme Court rules in Minor v. Happersett that right to vote is not inherent in citizenship.

1877 The Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

Southern Farmers Alliance organized.

Supreme Court decides Munn v. Illinois.

1881 President James Garfield assassinated. Chester Arthur sworn in.

1883 Congress passes the Pendleton Act, creating a Civil Service Commission.

1885 First appearance in print of the word "unemployment."

1886 American Federation of Labor founded.

May Day strike for the eight-hour workday.

Haymarket Square bombing.

1887 Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act.

1890s Southern states pass laws aimed at disfranchising blacks.

1890 National American Woman’s Suffrage Association founded.

Congress passes the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.

Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

1892 Formation of the People’s Party.

Grover Cleveland elected president.

1893 Congress repeals all laws authorizing federal supervision of southern elections.

Panic of 1893 triggers severe depression.

Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed..Politics and the State: 1876–1900

1894 Pullman Strike.

1895 Supreme Court issues three decisions—U.S. v. E.C. Knight, In

Re Debs, and Pollack v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co.— restricting state regulatory laws.

1896 William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan to win presidency.

1900 Congress passes Gold Standard Act.