This course will examine the years after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1900, a period in which Americans witnessed unprecedented economic expansion that profoundly altered political and social arrangements. It explores how the nation "recovered" from the Civil War, how it reconstructed itself, and continued to define the notion of who was an American and who was not. In short, it examines how the nation transitioned from one divided to the threshold of world domination in the age of imperialism.