AP US History Unit 6 Terms Quiz Period 6: 1865–1898
The Gilded Age brought rapid industrialization, urban growth, and major social changes. Test your knowledge of this era with our free Unit 6 Quiz. Review key APUSH vocabulary terms related to big business, labor unions, immigration, westward expansion, and the Populist movement. These concepts help explain the transformation of America from 1865–1898.
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Question 1 of 50
In May 1869, crews building west from Omaha and east from Sacramento met at Promontory Summit, Utah, and drove a golden spike to join their tracks, cutting the journey from coast to coast from months to about a week. Congress had financed the project with land grants and loans. This project was the
Question 2 of 50
In the 1850s, an English inventor developed a method of blowing air through molten iron to burn off impurities, making it possible to produce steel cheaply and in enormous quantities. American mills adopted it after the Civil War, and steel replaced iron in rails, bridges, and buildings. This method was the
Question 3 of 50
A Scottish immigrant who began as a bobbin boy in a textile mill rose to build the largest steel company in the world, then sold it in 1901 for nearly $500 million and gave most of his fortune away to libraries, universities, and foundations. This industrialist was
Question 4 of 50
Carnegie Steel bought the iron mines that supplied its ore, the ships and railroads that carried it, and the coal fields that fueled its furnaces, so that the company controlled every step from raw material to finished product and paid no profits to outside suppliers. This business strategy is called
Question 5 of 50
An Ohio businessman founded an oil-refining company in 1870 and, through secret railroad rebates, price wars, and buyouts, controlled about 90 percent of the nation’s refining capacity by 1880, becoming the richest man in America and the symbol of monopoly. This industrialist was
Question 6 of 50
Standard Oil grew by buying or crushing competing refineries until it owned nearly all of them, gaining control of an entire industry at a single stage of production rather than owning its suppliers and distributors. This business strategy is called
Question 7 of 50
In 1882, Standard Oil’s lawyers devised an arrangement in which stockholders of many separate companies turned their shares over to a single board of trustees, who then ran all the companies as one, evading state laws that barred a corporation from owning stock in another. This arrangement was the
Question 8 of 50
A New York banker reorganized bankrupt railroads, financed the merger that created U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation, and in 1895 personally lent the federal government gold to stop a run on the Treasury. This financier was
Question 9 of 50
In 1890, Congress passed a law declaring illegal every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade, but its vague wording and hostile courts made it nearly useless against monopolies, and it was used more often against labor unions than against businesses. This law was the
Question 10 of 50
In 1887, responding to farmers’ complaints about railroad rebates and discriminatory freight rates, Congress required that rates be “reasonable and just,” banned rebates and pools, and created the first federal regulatory agency to oversee the industry. This law was the
Question 11 of 50
Gilded Age business leaders and most politicians held that the economy worked best when government did not interfere, leaving prices, wages, and working conditions to be set by the free market and refusing to regulate corporations or aid the poor. This economic doctrine is called
Question 12 of 50
Thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner applied Darwin’s idea of natural selection to human society, arguing that wealth proved fitness, poverty proved weakness, and government help for the poor interfered with the natural process by which the strongest rose. This set of ideas is called
Question 13 of 50
In an 1889 essay, Andrew Carnegie argued that great fortunes were the natural result of competition but that the rich held their money in trust for society and should give it away during their lifetimes to libraries, schools, and other institutions that helped the deserving help themselves. This idea is called the
Question 14 of 50
Founded in 1869, a national labor organization welcomed skilled and unskilled workers, women, and Black workers alike, called for an eight-hour day and the abolition of child labor, and under Terence Powderly grew to some 700,000 members by 1886 before collapsing after the Haymarket affair. This organization was the
Question 15 of 50
In 1886, a federation of craft unions representing skilled workers set aside broad social reform and focused on “bread and butter” goals of higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions, using strikes and collective bargaining with employers. This organization was the
Question 16 of 50
A London-born cigar maker led the American Federation of Labor for nearly forty years, arguing that unions should avoid politics and radical ideas and pursue practical gains for their members through collective bargaining and, when needed, the strike. This labor leader was
Question 17 of 50
In May 1886, during a rally in Chicago supporting strikers at the McCormick reaper works, someone threw a bomb that killed seven police officers, and the police fired into the crowd. Eight anarchists were convicted with little evidence, and four were hanged. This event was the
Question 18 of 50
In 1892, after Carnegie Steel cut wages at its Pennsylvania plant and locked out the union, manager Henry Clay Frick sent 300 Pinkerton guards up the river by barge, and a gun battle with strikers left at least ten dead before the state militia broke the strike. This event was the
Question 19 of 50
In 1894, workers at a company town near Chicago struck after wage cuts with no reduction in rents, and Eugene V. Debs’s American Railway Union refused to handle the company’s sleeping cars, paralyzing rail traffic until President Cleveland sent federal troops and a court injunction broke the strike. This event was the
Question 20 of 50
In the summer of 1877, after the Baltimore and Ohio cut wages for the second time during a depression, railroad workers walked out and the strike spread spontaneously across the country, shutting down two-thirds of the nation’s track until President Hayes sent federal troops and about 100 people were killed. This event was the
Question 21 of 50
Beginning in the 1880s, the source of immigration shifted from northern and western Europe to Italy, Poland, Russia, Greece, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, bringing millions of Catholics, Jews, and Orthodox Christians who were poorer and less familiar to native-born Americans. These arrivals were called the
Question 22 of 50
In 1882, Congress passed the first federal law to bar immigration on the basis of nationality, suspending the entry of laborers from one country for ten years in response to pressure from western workers who blamed them for low wages. This law was the
Question 23 of 50
Many native-born Protestants feared that the newcomers of the 1880s and 1890s were unassimilable, that they took jobs and lowered wages, and that their Catholicism and radical politics threatened American institutions, and groups such as the American Protective Association organized to restrict immigration. This attitude is called
Question 24 of 50
In the big cities, organizations run by a “boss” traded jobs, food, coal, and help with the law for the votes of immigrants and the poor, while enriching themselves through kickbacks and padded contracts. New York’s Tammany Hall under William Tweed was the most notorious. These organizations were
Question 25 of 50
In 1889, a college-educated woman opened a house in a poor immigrant neighborhood of Chicago where she and other middle-class volunteers lived among the residents, offering English classes, child care, and cultural programs, and lobbying for housing and labor laws. This reformer was
Question 26 of 50
Protestant ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden argued that Christianity required believers to fight poverty, slums, and exploitation in this world rather than simply saving souls for the next, and that churches should back labor laws and social reform. This movement was the
Question 27 of 50
In 1887, Congress broke up reservations into individual plots of 160 acres for each Native family, with the “surplus” land sold to white settlers, in the belief that private property would turn Native peoples into independent farmers and American citizens. This law was the
Question 28 of 50
In June 1876, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, resisting removal to a reservation after gold was found in the Black Hills, wiped out George Custer and more than 200 soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry in Montana. This battle was
Question 29 of 50
In December 1890, soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry attempting to disarm a band of Lakota in South Dakota opened fire with rifles and rapid-fire guns, killing between 150 and 300 men, women, and children in what is usually considered the end of the Indian wars. This event was the
Question 30 of 50
In 1889, a Paiute prophet named Wovoka taught that if Native peoples performed a ritual dance and lived peacefully, the whites would vanish, the bison would return, and the dead would rise. The movement spread rapidly across the reservations of the Plains and alarmed federal officials. This movement was the
Question 31 of 50
In an 1893 paper, a young historian argued that the existence of free land at the edge of settlement had shaped American democracy, individualism, and character, and he warned that the 1890 census showing the frontier closed meant the first era of American history had ended. This historian was
Question 32 of 50
In 1892, farmers’ organizations and some labor groups formed a third party whose Omaha Platform called for government ownership of railroads, a graduated income tax, free coinage of silver, direct election of senators, and an eight-hour day. It won over a million votes that year. This party was the
Question 33 of 50
Founded in 1867 as a social and educational organization for isolated farm families, a group of local chapters soon turned to politics, pushing midwestern legislatures to pass laws regulating the rates charged by railroads and grain elevators. This organization was the
Question 34 of 50
In the 1880s, farmers in the South and the Great Plains organized regional networks that ran cooperatives, held lectures, published newspapers, and demanded a government-run system of warehouses where farmers could store crops and borrow against them. These networks were the
Question 35 of 50
Farmers and western silver-mine owners demanded that the government coin silver without limit at a ratio of sixteen to one with gold, which would expand the money supply, raise prices, and make debts easier to pay, while bankers and eastern business insisted on the gold standard. This demand was called
Question 36 of 50
At the 1896 Democratic convention, a 36-year-old Nebraska congressman electrified delegates with a speech attacking the gold standard, ending, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” and won the nomination of both the Democrats and the Populists. This politician was
Question 37 of 50
After Reconstruction, Atlanta editor Henry Grady and other boosters urged the former Confederacy to abandon its dependence on cotton, build textile mills, steel plants, and railroads, and attract northern capital, promising a region remade on the industrial model of the North. This vision was called the
Question 38 of 50
In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate railroad cars for Black and white passengers, ruling that segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment so long as the facilities were “separate but equal.” This case was
Question 39 of 50
Beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, southern states and cities passed laws requiring separate schools, railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and cemeteries for Black and white citizens, while poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses stripped Black men of the vote. These laws were called
Question 40 of 50
In an 1895 speech at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition, the founder of Tuskegee Institute urged Black southerners to accept segregation for now, forgo demands for political rights, and build economic strength through vocational training and hard work, telling whites that in social matters the races could be “as separate as the fingers.” This leader was
Question 41 of 50
A Memphis journalist, born into slavery, launched a national campaign against lynching in 1892 after three friends were murdered, documenting hundreds of cases to show that the usual excuse of protecting white women was a lie, and continued the crusade from Chicago after a mob destroyed her press. This activist was
Question 42 of 50
In 1883, after a disappointed office-seeker assassinated President Garfield, Congress required that a growing share of federal jobs be filled by competitive examination rather than political loyalty and barred officeholders from being forced to contribute to party campaigns. This law was the
Question 43 of 50
Mark Twain gave the decades after the Civil War a name that captured their glittering surface of wealth and progress over a base of corruption, political stalemate, and inequality, as weak presidents deferred to Congress and both parties avoided the real issues raised by industrialization. This era is called the
Question 44 of 50
A self-taught inventor working in a New Jersey laboratory that he called an invention factory produced the phonograph, a practical incandescent light bulb, and the first central power station, and held more than a thousand patents by his death. This inventor was
Question 45 of 50
In 1879, some 20,000 Black southerners, fleeing violence, debt, and the collapse of Reconstruction, migrated to Kansas and other western states in search of land and freedom, in the first large organized Black migration out of the South. These migrants were called
Question 46 of 50
In the 1870s, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota passed laws setting maximum rates that railroads and grain warehouses could charge, and in 1877 the Supreme Court upheld them, ruling that property “clothed with a public interest” could be regulated by the states. These laws were the
Question 47 of 50
In 1893, the failure of a major railroad and a run on the Treasury’s gold reserve set off the worst depression the nation had yet seen, with 500 banks and 15,000 businesses failing and unemployment near 20 percent, deepening the silver controversy and sending Coxey’s Army of the jobless to Washington. This crisis was the
Question 48 of 50
In 1890, a Danish-born police reporter published a book of photographs and descriptions of New York’s tenements, exposing middle-class readers to the overcrowding, filth, and disease in which immigrant families lived and spurring the first housing reforms. This journalist was
Question 49 of 50
Beginning in 1879, the federal government sent Native children to boarding schools far from their reservations, where their hair was cut, their languages forbidden, and their names changed, under the slogan “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The first and most famous of these schools was the
Question 50 of 50
Founded in 1874 and led after 1879 by Frances Willard, a national women’s organization campaigned against alcohol as the source of poverty and domestic abuse and expanded under the banner of “home protection” into prison reform, labor laws, and women’s suffrage, becoming the largest women’s organization of the century. This organization was the
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