OCR GCSE History B The Making of America 1789 to 1900: a complete period-study overview

What this option demands

The Making of America 1789 to 1900 is the most popular OCR History B period study, examined on Paper 3. A period study traces a country across several decades, and the exam rewards a secure chronological story, the ability to explain causes and consequences, and to judge importance. The option weaves together two great stories: the westward expansion of settlers (and the destruction of the Plains Indians) and the slavery crisis that led to the Civil War. This overview ties the dot-point pages together.

The Plains Indians

The Plains Indians lived as nomads on the Great Plains, following the buffalo on which their whole way of life depended, transformed by the horse from the Spanish. They lived in mobile bands led by a chief and council, valued bravery (counting coup), and believed the land could not be owned, a belief that set up the fatal clash with settlers.

Westward expansion

Settlers moved west for land (the Homestead Act of 1862), gold (the 1849 gold rush and later strikes), religious freedom (the Mormons), and the belief in Manifest Destiny. The transcontinental railroad (completed 1869) opened the West, and settlers conquered the harsh Plains through invention (the steel plough, barbed wire, windpumps), facing drought, isolation and conflict with the Plains Indians.

The Indian Wars

Conflict grew over land and the buffalo and the government's policy of broken treaties and reservations. After gold was found in the Black Hills (1874), war came. At Little Bighorn (1876) the Sioux and Cheyenne destroyed Custer's force, but it was their last great victory; the army then crushed resistance, ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890).

Slavery and the Civil War

America was split between a slave-owning, agricultural South and an industrial North with a growing anti-slavery movement. The fight over the expansion of slavery into new territories, through crises such as the Missouri Compromise, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott and John Brown, deepened the divide. When Lincoln won the 1860 election, the South seceded, and the Civil War (1861 to 1865) began. The North's resources, leadership, blockade and the Emancipation Proclamation won the war; the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

Reconstruction and the end of the Plains

Reconstruction tried to rebuild the South and give African Americans rights (the 14th and 15th Amendments), but it was resisted by the Ku Klux Klan and segregation laws and largely undone by 1900. Meanwhile the Plains Indians' way of life was destroyed by the loss of the buffalo, the reservation system, and forced assimilation (boarding schools, banned ceremonies, the Dawes Act of 1887), so by 1900 they were impoverished and stripped of land and culture.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall questions covering the whole option. Attempt them, then check the solutions.

1. What animal was the Plains Indians' way of life built on, and where did their horses come from? (2 marks)
2. What did the Homestead Act of 1862 offer? (1 mark)
3. When was the transcontinental railroad completed? (1 mark)
4. What happened at Little Bighorn (1876) and Wounded Knee (1890)? (2 marks)
5. Whose 1860 election triggered Southern secession? (1 mark)
6. Give two reasons the North won the Civil War. (2 marks)
7. What did the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments do? (3 marks)
8. What was the effect of the Dawes Act of 1887? (1 mark)