Period 6

This course is a part of AP®︎ US History, a 11-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

After the Civil War, the United States emerged as the world's foremost industrial power. With that came great wealth and great poverty.

This course contains 14 segments:

Contextualizing Period 6

Westward expansion: economic development

After the Civil War, there was one frontier left to conquer: the American West. As American settlers pushed west, Native Americans fought to survive.

Westward expansion: social and cultural development

The "New South"

What would life be like in the South after the end of slavery and the plantation system?

Technological innovation

The rise of industrial capitalism

Labor in the Gilded Age

Immigration and migration in the Gilded Age

In the late nineteenth century, people poured into American cities from all over the world, looking for work and a new life. Some of them prospered, but many more fought poverty, poor living and working conditions, and pervasive discrimination.

Responses to immigration in the Gilded Age

Development of the middle class

Reform in the Gilded Age

Controversies over the role of government in the Gilded Age

Politics in the Gilded Age

Continuity and change in Period 6