San Antonio College Library

During the Gilded Age, as the later 19th century in America has become known, the former rural republic had become an industrialized nation and a power in the world. 'New Spirits' describes a pivotal era in the history of the United States.

Nineteenth-century photographs, documents, and writings vividly contrast immigrant and upper-class lifestyles while illuminating the characteristics of urban transportation, architecture, social structure, and politics.

The half century between the end of the Civil War and the Declaration of War in 1917 was quiet only in the general misconception. From the ordinary nineteenth-century American's point of view, it was extraordinarily bloody. There were military expeditions against Indian tribes and against Cuba and the Philippines. There was the general strike of 1877, the cruel failure of the unions, and the ides of immigration and their furious personal energy. There...