History of the United States II / Unit 18 USH2 2570 review, 2 to 3 minutes
The Arc of Theme Six
The idea
Theme six, the changing role of the federal government, can now be stated in one arc. In unit five Washington regulated little and relieved no one: the Sherman Act went seldom enforced, entry 0612, and Coxey's marchers were ignored, entry 0622. Unit six built a regulatory state and an income tax, entries 0756 and 0788. Unit eight showed a government that could run the economy in war, entry 1074. Unit ten's Hoover acted but refused direct relief, entry 1368. Unit eleven's New Deal made the federal role permanent, and the anchor says its laws still define the country, entry 1559.
In practice
Nine waypoints across thirteen units, from a march on Washington in eighteen ninety-four to a health care law in two thousand ten.
Where people slip
Unit thirteen's Eisenhower kept the settlement, entry 1830; unit fourteen's Great Society extended it, entry 1967; unit sixteen's Reagan contested it and Clinton redrew welfare, entries 2256 and 2301; unit seventeen's crisis brought the government back in force and health insurance finally passed, entries 2423 and 2441. The Yawp's phrase for the change, in entry 1558, is a government out of sight becoming a potential ally, and Digital History calls that shift the New Deal's greatest legacy. Across the whole arc the question changed shape rather than disappearing: first whether Washington should act at all, then how far, then for whom. That is the portable test the exam rewards: for any period, ask what the federal government was expected to do, who expected it, and who received its help. The course's position is the sources' own: the federal role was set by crisis, kept across party lines, contested and partly redrawn, and never returned to the government of unit five.
Your place on the trail
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