The Gilded Age

The period in United States history following the Civil War and Reconstruction, lasting from the late 1860s to 1896, is referred to as the "Gilded Age." This term was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873. The term refers to the gilding of a cheaper metal with a thin layer of gold. Many critics complained that the era was marked by ostentatious display, crass manners, corruption, and shoddy ethics.

Historians view the Gilded Age as a period of rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. This transformation forged a modern, national industrial society out of what had been small regional communities. By the end of the Gilded Age, the United States was at the top end of the world's leading industrial nations. In the Progressive Era that followed the Gilded Age, the United States became a world power. In the process, there was much dislocation, including the destruction of the Plains Indians, hardening discrimination against African Americans, and environmental degradation. Two extended nationwide economic depressions followed the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.

End of the Gilded Age

The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression, which lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. This productive but divisive era was followed by the Progressive Era.