APUSH

Extra Credit – Second Quarter

For a maximum of five extra credit points, write a one-page single spaced paper addressing one of the topics below. You must use parenthetical citations to cite your sources. You will submit the paper to turnitin.com. A hard copy will not be accepted.

K 23

  • Focus on the Tweed scandal as both event and symbol of the generally corrupt atmosphere of the times. Thomas Nast political cartoons make a good starting point.
  • Discuss Grant’s failures as president in contrast with his success as a general. Contrast his performance with that of other general-presidents such as Washington or Jackson who were successful politicians.
  • Consider the Compromise of 1877 in relation to race and sectional conflict. Ask whether a Republican unwillingness to compromise by ending Reconstruction might have led to renewed sectional violence.
  • Examine the “corrupt” J.P. Morgan gold deal of 1895 as a symbol of what many Americans saw as the capture of the federal government by big business. Consider Morgan himself as an important political as well as economic figure, and ask whether he deserved the villainous treatment he received from critics and protestors.
  • Consider various prejudicial stereotypes of Chinese-American immigrants from the movies or elsewhere (for example, Charlie Chan). Compare these images with the actual experiences of Chinese-Americans.
  • Consider how the history of California and the West Coast was significantly affected by the presence of even the relatively small number of Chinese immigrants. Examine whether that history has a new significance today, when modern China has again become a great power and new generations of Asian-American immigrants have arrived.

K 24

  • Discuss the railroads as both romantic enterprise (for example, the golden spike, the luxurious Pullman cars) and as controversial exploitative business (for example, the corruption of legislatures, price-fixing).
  • Examine the benefits and drawbacks of industrialization for various groups (business, labor, women, minorities, immigrants).
  • Using Edison as a symbol of the emerging technological and industrial age, show how his inventions were quickly taken up and incorporated into huge new industries.
  • Use the Haymarket affair to illustrate the growing class conflicts in industrial America and to highlight the debates over how American workers should respond to the new industrial conditions.
  • Examine the Knights’ role in the great industrial strikes of 1886. Explain why they experienced a boom in membership, especially with the advocacy of the eight-hour day, and then suddenly collapsed and soon disappeared.
  • Examine the biographies of the Knights’ two most prominent leaders, Terence Powderly and “Mother” Jones. Perhaps compare their “utopian”- and “producer”-oriented outlook with that of more pragmatic unionists such as Samuel Gompers and socialists such as Eugene V. Debs.

K 25

  • Use Jane Addams’s experiences to demonstrate how some Americans encountered the problems of new industrial metropolises like Chicago.
  • Examine the myths and the realities of immigration. A good starting point might be Emma Lazarus’s Statue of Liberty poem, which says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but also called the immigrants “wretched refuse.”
  • Analyze the impact of urban life, immigration, Darwinism, and biblical higher criticism (literary scholarship) on religion, including the “immigrant religions” such as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Judaism.
  • Consider the impact and meaning of new “popular amusements” such as the circus, baseball, vaudeville, and so on.
  • Compare the ethnic “Little Italy” enclaves in various American cities with the “Chinatowns” established by the Chinese-Americans (Chapter 24). Consider what functions these communities served for the new immigrants, and how they affected other Americans’ perceptions of the immigrants.
  • Examine biographies of some recently prominent Italian-Americans (for example, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, actor Al Pacino, historian Eugene Genovese). Explore how their parents’ and grandparents’ experience fits into the general history of Italian immigration to America.

K 26

  • Focus on one of the notable Indian chiefs (for example, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, or Geronimo). Examine their roles as leaders of their people both in resistance to white conquest and under the forced circumstances of reservation life. Consider their subsequent role as continuing symbols in later American history and culture.
  • Discuss the validity of the frontier thesis first advanced by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. (See Expanding the “Varying Viewpoints” for an excerpt from Turner’s famous essay.) Consider how his use of the word frontier contrasts with common understanding, in which the term refers almost entirely to the post–Civil War frontier of the Great West.
  • Examine the life of the typical homesteader on the Great Plains, perhaps drawing on literary works such as those of Ole Rolvaag or Willa Cather. Consider why such a person might be led to join the Farmers’ Alliances. Perhaps compare the condition of pioneer farmers with those in the South, white and black.
  • Consider the rapid rise and fall of the Populists in both the West and the South. Consider the attempt by Populists such as Tom Watson to overcome racial division, and explain the reasons he and other disillusioned reformers later turned to a vicious racism.
  • Examine Hanna’s free-spending policies in the 1896 election. Assess what role campaign spending (and other political tactics) may have had in defeating Bryan, compared with the deeper social and political forces that kept most of the urban working class from supporting the pro-silver campaign.
  • Analyze the long-term significance of the Republican victory in 1896. Consider McKinley as a symbol of triumphant urban industrial capitalism and the harbinger of an age of Republican political domination.