The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

When measured by production per acre, American farmers were not efficient, but they were remarkably efficient when measured by production per worker.

Congress had failed to pass antipolygamy legislation before the Civil War, partially because the South regarded such legislation against a “peculiar institution” as a precedent for laws against slavery.

Mythologized as the heartland of individualism, the West became the kindergarten of the modern American state.

Gold and silver stood for more than money; they became icons of deep beliefs and ways to talk about civilization, morality, progress, and “inferior” and “superior” races.

Bryan had delivered his position in one of the less-often quoted sections of his Cross of Gold speech: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”