The Gilded Age.

The years between 1878 and 1899 were a soul-searching time for Americans, as they examined the basic values they lived by. Middle-class white women became interested in social causes such as helping the urban poor, promoting temperance or prohibition of alcohol, and winning suffrage, or the right to vote, for themselves. Racial tensions worsened in the South, and the ongoing bloody conflict with Native Americans ended with the surrender of the Lakotas in 1891. Millions of immigrants arrived in the United States. Bringing with them new customs, foods, and points of view, they contributed to the political and social conflict of the day. Despite great hostility from whites, Chinese immigrants in the West built the railroad system that linked the East and the West, and then they stood by powerless as new immigration restrictions prevented them from bringing their families to America. Racial, ethnic, and class conflict prompted...