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This classroom simulation uses active learning to introduce students to congressional politics using the national issues of the Gilded Age. Instructors can adjust the simulation to different grade levels (seventh grade to college) and time constraints (one to five class periods) using the various options provided. They can also shift the focus of the simulation from regional politics to political processes, historical events and persons, or a combination of all three. The simulation provides opportunities for historical and biographical research, writing assignments, class presentations, debates, and use of parliamentary procedures as well as comparisons and contrasts with historical events.
Congressional politics is particularly interesting in the Gilded Age because Congress played a predominant role in the national government during much of the period, with majority control of Congress shifting frequently between the two major political parties. Furthermore, the major parties had a penchant for straddling the most important issues, which led to intense interparty struggles as well as the emergence of a series of third parties. Also, the Gilded Age marks the transition from nineteenth-century political issues that usually generated regional and sectional loyalties to twentieth-century political issues that tended to inspire national loyalties. Following the Civil War, new regional issues such as the coinage of silver and the regulation of railroads were added to the longstanding regional issues of the protective tariff and civil rights for African Americans.
Background on Regional Issues
Protective tariffs were an important issue for manufacturers in the North, who had great influence over senators from their region. Many citizens throughout the country supported high tariffs as a means of promoting economic development. Southerners were strongly opposed to high tariffs because foreign countries usually retaliated by placing their own tariffs on the large volume of cotton and tobacco exports from the South. Reformers throughout the country, as well as most westerners, were generally opposed to a high tariff but did not consider it as important as other issues. Efforts to lower tariff rates were unsuccessful during the 1880s, and in 1890 the McKinley Tariff adjusted them even higher. Success in the 1892 election enabled the Democratic party to lower the rates in the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894, but Republican victories in 1896 resulted in the Dingley Tariff of 1897, which...