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  3. 19th Century

19th Century

Though the 19th century saw the rise of populism, the labor movement and Jacksonian democracy, it also ushered in the Gilded Age, when men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan wielded vast control over politics and business.

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HISTORY: The Gilded Age

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Gilded Age

The Gilded Age describes the tumultuous years between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century when America saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology and when greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth.

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Lupine grows next to wagon wheel ruts made by wagon trains crossing the South Pass on the Oregon Trail. South Pass is the highest point in elevation on the trail.

Oregon Trail

Missionaries Blaze the Oregon Trail By the 1840s, the Manifest Destiny had Americans in the East eager to expand their horizons. While Lewis and Clark had made their way west from 1804 to 1806, merchants, traders and trappers were also among the first people to forge a path across the Continental Divide. But it was […]

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Buffalo Soldiers in 1898 during the Spanish-American war

Buffalo Soldiers

Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers? No one knows for certain why, but the soldiers of the all-Black 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were dubbed “buffalo soldiers” by the Native Americans they encountered. One theory claims the nickname arose because the soldiers’ dark, curly hair resembled the fur of a buffalo. Another assumption is the soldiers […]

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Miners during the Klondike Gold Rush

Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush, often called the Yukon Gold Rush, was a mass exodus of prospecting migrants from their hometowns to the Canadian Yukon Territory and Alaska after gold was discovered there in 1896.

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Industrial Revolution

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2:11 minTV-PG
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Labor Movement

Analyze the impact of the labor movement in America throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

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2:41 minTV-PG

Migrants Travel West on the Oregon Trail

Over 400,000 people travel West to start a new life and claim new land along the Oregon Trail, including Lucinda Brown. One-hundred seventy years later, one of her descendants sees a kettle from her journey for the first time.

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1:48 minTV-PG

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Get a crash course on the causes and consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 with historian Matthew Pinsker.

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1:55 minTV-PG

Manifest Destiny

Historian Matthew Pinsker gives a crash course on the concept of “manifest destiny” and the seeds of westward American expansion.

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The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran.

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How Yellowstone Became America’s First National Park

Yellowstone’s stunning natural beauty inspired the 19th-century push to set aside the land, where Indigenous people had been present for millennia.

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Railroad strike destruction at the 26th Street Pennsylvania Railroad Round House, July 14-27 1877, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The 1877 Strike That Brought US Railroads to a Standstill

Thousands of rail workers in states across the country protested poor pay and working conditions in a massive—and violent—uprising.

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December 17th, 1903, Kittyhawk, North Carolina: The World's first flight with Orville Wright at the controls. His brother Wilbur is running at the side of the machine.

7 Gilded Age Inventions That Changed the World

Some of the modern world’s most groundbreaking technologies emerged during this 30-year period.

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Seated portrait of cartoonist Thomas Nast. Photo by Matthew Brady.

The Political Cartoonist Who Helped Lead to ‘Boss’ Tweed’s Downfall

Thomas Nast gleefully—and bravely—mocked the Tammany Hall boss in multiple cartoons, prompting newspapers and authorities to investigate.

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This Day in History

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1817

Construction on the Erie Canal begins

19th Century
1818

Frederick Douglass is born

19th Century
1885

“Good Housekeeping” goes on sale for the first time

19th Century
1866

The New Orleans Massacre

19th Century
1873

The Colfax Massacre

19th Century
1893

22 die in collapse of Ford’s Theatre, site of Lincoln assassination

19th Century
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