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

Chapter 19: FROM CRISIS TO EMPIRE

Main themes of Chapter Nineteen:

• The effects of the political equilibrium of the Democratic and Republican parties during the late nineteenth century, and the origins of this equilibrium in differing regional and sociocultural bases



• The inability of the political system and a limited national government to respond effectively to the nation's rapid social and economic changes, particularly the advent of large corporations and industrial capitalism



• The powerful but unsuccessful challenge mounted by the troubled agrarian sector to the new directions of American industrial capitalism, and how this confrontation came to a head during the crises of the 1890s and the election of 1896



• The evolution of the old continental concept of Manifest Destiny to justify a new expansion of America across the seas



• The initial forays of American imperial power into places such as Hawaii and Samoa



• The role of the Spanish-American War in catalyzing these imperialist stirrings into a full-fledged American empire



• The attitudinal, political, and military adjustments forced on the nation in its new role as a major world power



• The American imperial experience in the Philippines and China, and what lessons American leaders took from both

• The nature of American party politics in the last third of the nineteenth century



• The problems of political patronage in the administrations of Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur that led to the passage of the Pendleton Act



• The circumstances that permitted the Democrats to gain control of the presidency in the elections of 1884 and 1892



• The origins, purposes, and effectiveness of the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act



• The positions of the two major parties on the tariff question, and the actual trend of tariff legislation in the 1880s and 1890s



• The rise of agrarian discontent as manifested in the Granger movement, the Farmers' Alliances, and the Populist movement



• The historical controversy surrounding the origins and character of agrarian populism



• The rise of the silver question from the "Crime of '73" through the Gold Standard Act of 1900



• The significance of the presidential campaign and election of 1896



• The reasons for the decline of agrarian discontent after 1898



• The new strand of Manifest Destiny, and its roots in the old Manifest Destiny philosophy



• The objectives of American foreign policy at the turn of the century with respect to power in Western Hemisphere



• The relationship between American economic and military interests and imperial developments in Hawaii, Samoa, and Puerto Rico



• The causes and events leading up to and through the Spanish-American War



• The military and political problems encountered in fighting the Spanish and, subsequently, the Filipinos



• The motives behind the Open Door notes and the Boxer intervention



• The nature of the military reforms carried out following the Spanish-American War



• American imperial ambitions in comparison with broader global trends in imperialism at the turn of the century