AP® United States History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/us-history/units/6/6-14)
Unit 6 · Topic 6.14
6.14 Continuity and Change in Period 6
This skill topic practices continuity and change over time across the Gilded Age. You decide how much industrialization, the West, the South and the government's role really changed between 1865 and 1898, and you support your judgment with evidence for both what changed and what stayed the same.
Key terms
- continuity and change over time
- turning point
- industrialization
- laissez-faire
- New South
What the skill asks
Continuity and change over time (CCOT) means explaining what changed and what stayed the same across a period, and why. Strong answers do three things: describe the situation at the start, describe it at the end, and explain the causes of the change or the reasons for continuity.
Useful verbs: transformed, accelerated, expanded, persisted, remained, continued, declined. Useful structure: 'Although X changed significantly, Y largely continued, because…'
Big changes from 1865 to 1898
- From a mostly agricultural economy to the world's largest industrial economy, led by giant corporations like Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil.
- From skilled craft work to wage labor in large factories, with national unions and massive strikes.
- From a Plains region controlled by Native nations to one of railroads, farms and reservations, after the destruction of the buffalo and wars ending at Wounded Knee (1890).
- From 'old' immigrants from Northern and Western Europe to 'new' immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, and from about one in four Americans living in cities in 1870 to about two in five by 1900.
- The first federal regulation of business: the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890).
Important continuities
- Laissez-faire mostly held. Regulation was weak and courts protected business, and the federal government offered almost no relief in depressions.
- Racial hierarchy in the South continued after Reconstruction and was rebuilt in law through Jim Crow and disfranchisement, upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
- Most Southerners remained farmers, many trapped in sharecropping and debt despite New South promises.
- Nativism continued from the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings of the 1850s to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and the American Protective Association (1887).
- U.S. expansion continued, from westward expansion over the continent to new territory and influence overseas in Alaska and Hawaii.
Turning points
A turning point is an event that marks a clear shift. Strong choices for Period 6 include 1877 (the end of Reconstruction and the Great Railroad Strike), 1887 (the Dawes Act and the Interstate Commerce Act), 1890 (Wounded Knee, the Sherman Act and the census declaring the frontier closed) and 1896 (Plessy and the McKinley–Bryan election). Name the turning point, then explain what was different before and after it.
Weighing 'how much'
Most CCOT prompts ask you to evaluate the extent of change, so you need a judgment, not just a list. One way to decide is to ask who experienced the change. Industrialization transformed life for a Pittsburgh steelworker or a Chicago clerk, but a Black sharecropper in Mississippi in 1898 farmed cotton under debt and white political control, much as in 1877.
Another way is to compare the scale of change with what came later. The Interstate Commerce Commission was a real first step, but it looks small next to the regulation of the Progressive Era (7.4) and the New Deal (7.10). Placing a development in that longer story lets you argue 'it changed, but only somewhat' with confidence.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Writing a CCOT thesis
Write a thesis for this prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the role of the federal government in the economy changed from 1865 to 1898.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Take a clear position on 'extent': a great deal, somewhat, or very little.
- Step 2: Name the change and the continuity in the thesis itself.
- Step 3: Preview your evidence categories so the reader sees your line of reasoning.
Answer: Model thesis: From 1865 to 1898 the federal government's role in the economy changed only slightly. It began, for the first time, to regulate big business through the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), but laissez-faire largely continued, because courts weakened these laws, presidents refused relief during depressions, and federal power was used mainly to help business through tariffs, land grants and troops sent against strikers.
Common mistakes
- Describing only change, or only continuity. Strong answers address both, even if one dominates.
- Listing facts without explaining why things changed or stayed the same.
- Choosing a 'turning point' without saying what was different before and after it.
On the exam
- The LEQ often uses 'evaluate the extent to which' with CCOT reasoning. Your thesis must take a position and be historically defensible.
- A complexity point can come from explaining both change and continuity, or from connecting the period to developments before or after it.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 6.14 Continuity and Change in Period 6. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Which of the following best describes a continuity in the South between 1865 and 1898?
Which of the following best describes a change in the federal government's role in the economy between 1865 and 1898?
"The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires. . . .
We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads . . . . We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita. We demand a graduated income tax."
Source: Platform of the People's (Populist) Party, adopted at its national convention in Omaha, Nebraska, July 1892.
Which demand in the excerpt was later adopted through a constitutional amendment?
Source 1: "The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement; a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core; a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace; and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age."
Source 2: "But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."
Source 1: Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, speech to the New England Society of New York, December 1886. Source 2: Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896.
The Court's majority decision in Plessy v. Ferguson most directly resulted in
0 of 4 answered