This volume, the third edition of America in the Gilded Age, a history of the United States from the assassination of Lincoln in 1865 to the accession of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901, has been planned in conjunction with two projected sequels: America Ascendant, covering the rise of the United States to world preeminence in the first half of the twentieth century, and a later volume, America in the Atomic Age, covering the years of the Cold War from 1945.
When the first edition of America in the Gilded Age was published in 1984, there was little thought that it would be the first of an occasional series. However, publication of four subsequent histories, albeit for different readerships, and the response they received provided an opportunity for Colin Jones, director of New York University Press, editor Niko Pfund, and me to reflect on and plan new editions in a series with a standard format—general histories covering a specific period of American history with chronological chapters on politics and separate thematic chapters on business and industry, immigration, and labor.
We were helped by professional historians who kindly took the time to respond to questions at the book fair of the May 1991 meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Louisville, Kentucky. The questions covered such subjects as the nature and time frames of different historical periods; the sorts of subjects usefully covered in integrated chapters and those usefully covered in separate thematic chapters; the optimum length of books required in university courses; and the different uses of bibliographies, primary sources, and illustrations. There seemed to be a consensus that the period from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century does constitute a clearly defined historical period; and there was a preference for separate treatment of certain thematic subjects in the Gilded Age, for bibliographies that provided lists of books arranged alphabetically by topic, and for judicious selection of illustrations. Accordingly, the third edition of America in the Gilded Age has an extra chapter on the American Renaissance and extended chapters on immigration, labor, cities, and the West.
Colin Jones, Niko Pfund, and I reviewed copy on the American Renaissance of 1876-1917 in America in the Age of the Titans: the Progressive Era and World War I (1988), and decided to incorporate it in a fuller and more elaborate treatment in the third edition of America in the Gilded Age. Among various guides to the American Renaissance, the most persuasive were the planners of an exhibition, The American Renaissance, 1876-1917, seen in Brooklyn, Washington, San Francisco, and Denver in 1979 and 1980. They also provided an attractive commentary in an accompanying book of the same title (1979) by Richard Guy Wilson, Richard N. Murray, and Dianne H. Pilgrim, and this meticulous account has served as stimulus and basis for this chapter. I have added material about the impact that the American Renaissance had on city design to the close of the preceding chapter on American cities.
We also reread the longer, original manuscripts of the chapters on immigration and labor for the first edition of America in the Gilded Age in their hitherto unpublished forms. They included some discussion on women and African-Americans in the labor movement. Given the answers of historians at the Louisville meeting and the preferences they disclosed on these subjects, the editors agreed to incorporate some of these original versions into what are now more substantive chapters in this third edition. Moreover, we have placed these two chapters with their related themes of workers seeking economic opportunity in apposition to one another. The chapter on the West takes note of revisionist histories of the region.
The ground swell of city and state progressivism from 1890 onwards is as central a part of American history at the close of the Gilded Age as are Populism and imperialism. Thus in the second and third editions of America in the Gilded Age, we added a chapter on progressivism as well as a revised chapter on the robber barons. Iain Halliday, formerly of the Universities of Manchester, England, and Catania, Italy, undertook preliminary scholarship into the Progressive movement. Dr. J. A. Thompson of Cambridge and Princeton Universities read what I had written and offered constructive criticism. This last chapter now includes information on the campaign for women’s suffrage in the nineteenth century—a few paragraphs that have also been borrowed from America in the Age of the Titans.
Thus two new and several revised chapters have been introduced since America in the Gilded Age was first published. Since the first edition of 1984 terms for certain subjects have changed in standard speech and in writing. In the new edition we have almost always used the term African-Americans, rather than blacks, and the new English transliteration of Chinese place names but, depending on context, have used both Native Americans and Indians to describe descendants of the first peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
We have revised both the general design and the collection of illustrations and, as has been the case with other books in this series, I thank staff members of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress—this time Ms. Mary Ison, Ms. Maja Keech, and Ms. Jan Grenci—for their help in selection. Once again, I am grateful to NYUP, in particular Colin Jones, Niko Pfund, and Managing Editor Despina Papazoglou Gimbel, for the care and thoroughness with which they have treated this book.
I am especially indebted to Donald and Basha Baerman, whose friendship sustained me through work on the third edition.
Preface to the First Edition
This book, intended as an introduction to the Gilded Age and Industrial America, offers a general account of the industrial and economic, social and political history of the period from 1865 to 1901. It is a work of synthesis, drawn from recent scholarship and from some primary sources. It gives pride of place to the amazing developments in industry—for many people the most original and distinctive feature of the period—and then describes the complementary social history of immigration, urbanization, and labor unions. The second half of the book concentrates on the political stories of Reconstruction and party politics and the rise of dissent culminating in the Populist Revolt. It concludes with accounts of imperialism and progressivism at the turn of the century. The book aims at a clear, concise presentation of essential facts but it does not attempt to record the history of high society or the complex and diverse stories of education and religion, arts and letters. Westward expansion is considered only briefly. The book is designed both for those who want to read about Reconstruction and the years to 1877 in general and those who, instead, prefer to begin in 1876 or 1877. It places some emphasis on the life stories and personalities of the principal protagonists and includes illustrations.
I began this book in the spring of 1981 at the suggestion of Colin Jones, and I completed it in the fall of 1982 during a study-leave from my duties as lecturer in American history at Manchester University in England. I thank my colleagues and especially Professors Peter Marshall and Dennis Welland for making this possible. During fall semester of 1982 I was the guest of the American Studies Program at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. I thank the director, Professor Howard Gillette, for making arrangements for my visit, and Professors Bernard Mergen of GWU and Wilcomb Washburn of the Smithsonian Institution for inviting me to teach in their classes. Professor David Reimers of New York University offered constructive advice on the structure and content of the book, particularly on immigration. Ms. Mary Ison of the Library of Congress was most helpful in the selection of illustrations. Mrs. Eileen Grimes typed the manuscript.
The Electric Tower dominated the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901, widely interpreted as the culmination of America’s industrial and imperial progress in the Gilded Age. Mastery of the new technology of electricity made it possible to apply limitless energy in precise quantities. Journalist Mark Sullivan commented how “electricity was streaking up and down the country, literally like lightning—wires to provide it with a pathway were everywhere being extended, like long nerves of a new growth, from central power houses, from the city to the suburb . . . everywhere ending in the turn of a switch, by the turning of which a man could tap for himself a practically limitless reservoir of physical power.” (Photo by C. D. Arnold, Library of Congress.)