In pressing for drastic changes in American society, did the Progressive movement stay true to Founding principles? Mark Thomas and Joseph Postell debate this question.

To what extent did the progressives diverge from the Founding in terms of the purposes, scale, and scope of government? Use these the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and speeches from Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Beard, and Calvin Coolidge to help students answer this question.

Part of the Civil War’s legacy was a shift in the role of the national government. The defeat of the South, Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment gave the national government growing power over the states and the people. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the national government power (though exactly how much power was still being debated) to ensure state laws did not violate the rights of the freedmen. Additional amendments during the Progressive Era (the 1890s - 1920s) continued this transfer of power to the national government. In the name of giving power to the people, the national government was given power to tax incomes; states lost their representation in Congress, the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned, and women were given the right to vote.

The twentieth century saw the rise of a widespread but not very clearly defined group of reformers known as the progressives. The basic belief that united them was that the industrialized, urbanized United States of the nineteenth century had outgrown its eighteenth-century Constitution.

In this episode, we will focus on economic and political developments of the Gilded Age and the Progressive era, with a focus on comparing the relationship between government and big business during these two periods.