Immigration and migration, racism and civil rights, labor and industry, women and universal suffrage, American Indians, and the environment are just a few of the issues that came to the fore during the Gilded Age.
With this collection, Alexander Street brings together texts, photographs, songs for listening online, and other primary materials, along with video interviews and twenty-five critical documentary essays. Each documentary essay poses an interpretive question and then illuminates it with dozens of annotated primary documents, introductions, and essays. The critical documentary essays have been created by leading scholars in the field, including Samuel Thomas of Michigan State University, Christopher Reed of Roosevelt University, Kim Warren of the University of Kansas, and Daniel Thorp of Virginia Tech. The result is a highly visual, annotated record of this critical period in American history.
Building on the award-winning work and Web site created by Drew VandeCreek at Northern Illinois University, Alexander Street’s The Gilded Age is organized around more than ten historical themes, with associated document projects. Examples include:
Race and Ethnicity
Economics, Labor, and Commerce
Government, Politics, and Law
Women
Arts and Culture
Social Progress and Reform
War and Military Life
Researchers will find especially useful an extensive bibliography, exclusive to The Gilded Age, and video interviews of leading historians such as Maureen Flanagan (Michigan State University), Michael Kazin (Georgetown University), and James Gilbert (University of Maryland). The Gilded Age also brings together primary materials from libraries, museums, and archives including the Newberry Library, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Illinois State Library.
The collection has been developed under the oversight of an editorial board of scholarly advisors, including Erika Lee of the University of Minnesota, Julie Roy Jeffrey of Goucher College, and Richard Schneirov of Indiana State University.
Content Types: artwork, books, diaries, ephemera, essays, government/institutional documents, interviews, letters, periodicals, song lyrics, speeches, and more.
Subjects: American Revolution, education, labor and unions, laws and legislation, politics, race relations, railroads, Reconstruction, religion, U.S. Civil War, war, women's rights, and more.
"By 1867 attempts to unify the farmer began and the first farmers’ organization, The Patrons of Husbandry, also known as Grange, was born. Described as an apolitical social organization, it was a fraternal group of men and women who met to discuss economic solutions to their problems, build a community, and affect change."
"Citizens in small parties of five or six go out whenever occasion requires, and afford aid and comfort to unfortunate travellers who happen to be waylaid in pursuit of their legitimate business; and the Previous Papago Indians also do good service by following up and killing the hostile savages who infest the country."
"But O, my soul is very sad, My brain is almost wild; It breaks my heart, to think that I Am call'd a drunkard's child.". Photo: Library of Congress, Music Division
"This still left in captivity Cynthia and John Parker, who, as subsequently learned, were held by separate bands. The brother and sister thus separated, gradually forgot the language, manners and customs of their own people, and became thorough Comanches as the long years stole slowly away."
