APUSH Period 6 — The Gilded Age, 1865–1898

Period 6 of AP United States History, 1865 to 1898, carries between 10 and 17 percent of the exam. In three decades the United States became the world's leading industrial economy, and almost every question about the period asks who gained, who lost and how Americans argued about it. This material takes those arguments in turn.

It begins with big business and its defenders: Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth, the Social Darwinism of writers such as William Graham Sumner, and the vertical integration that let Carnegie Steel undersell its rivals. It then turns to the first attempts to control corporate power, from the Granger laws and the Wabash case to the Interstate Commerce Act, and to workers' answers: the Knights of Labor, open to almost everyone, against the skilled craft unions of the American Federation of Labor, and the defeat of the Homestead strike of 1892.

The second half covers who belonged in industrial America: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first federal law to bar immigrants by nationality; Plessy v. Ferguson and Justice Harlan's dissent; the promises and realities of the New South; Booker T. Washington's Atlanta address and the anti-lynching campaign of Ida B. Wells; the final wars on the Plains and the massacre at Wounded Knee; and the Pendleton Act, passed after a disappointed office seeker killed President Garfield.

The twelve quiz questions include short public-domain sources quoted in the question, from Carnegie, the Exclusion Act, Harlan's dissent and Washington's address, and ask what position a source takes, what context produced it and what it changed. Explanations separate ideas students often merge, such as the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism, or vertical and horizontal integration.

The eighteen flashcards run from the transcontinental railroad to Hull House, each with its date and significance.

The category's material on 1865 to 1945 already covers horizontal integration, the Pullman strike, the new immigration, the Dawes Act, the Populist platform and political machines; this material fills in the rest of the period, for use during Unit 6 in class or in review before the May exam.

  • Explain the arguments used to defend the new industrial order, including the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism
  • Describe the strategies of large corporations and the first federal attempts to regulate them
  • Compare the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor and explain why strikes such as Homestead failed
  • Explain how Chinese exclusion, Plessy v. Ferguson and the Plains wars defined who belonged in Gilded Age America
  • Evaluate the New South and the responses of black leaders to segregation

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board AP U.S. History course framework (course and exam description effective fall 2026), Unit 6, Period 6: 1865–1898, topics on westward expansion, the New South, industrial capitalism, labor, immigration, the Gilded Age debates over the role of government and politics. Quoted sources are public-domain texts of 1882–1896.

Sample question

In his 1889 essay 'Wealth,' the steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie concluded that 'the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.' Which position does the author take?

See the answer

The rich have a duty to spend their surplus wealth during their lifetimes on institutions that help others rise, such as libraries and universities

Carnegie accepted inequality as the price of industrial progress but argued that the wealthy were trustees of their surplus and should give it away wisely in their own lifetimes; he funded thousands of public libraries. He opposed both redistribution by the state and large inheritances, and he did not favor worker cooperatives.

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