Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Preface

About the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI)

Established in 1999, the Bill of Rights Institute is a nonprofit entity that supports secondary school teachers of American history, civics, and social studies. By providing free digital resources to educators and students, and professional development programs for instructors, BRI is committed to “educating for self-governance.” In doing so, BRI inspires the rising generation to champion the ideals expressed in our nation’s founding documents and to strive for their full realization.

About OpenStax

OpenStax is part of Rice University, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable corporation. Our mission is to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library has since scaled to over 40 books for college and AP® courses used by hundreds of thousands of students. OpenStax Tutor, our low-cost personalized learning tool, is being used in college courses throughout the country. Through our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and our alliance with other educational resource organizations, OpenStax is breaking down the most common barriers to learning and empowering students and instructors to succeed.

About OpenStax resources

About *Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness*

*Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (LLPH)* is designed to meet the course needs of a yearlong U.S. History or AP U.S. History class. The history of the United States is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment. The content is coupled with rigorous assessments that help students to develop historical thinking skills and reasoning processes.

Additional resources

About the contributors

More than 100 individuals contributed to this resource, including authors and reviewers listed alphabetically, and lead reviewers Rob McDonald and Carol Berkin, who provided input on the entire publication.

1491–1763

1491–1607

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 1 Introductory Essay: 1491–1607

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain the context for European encounters in the Americas from 1491 to 1607

Introduction

During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europeans explored the world’s oceans and distant coasts. Once a barrier to exploration, the Atlantic Ocean now became their route to other seas, faraway regions, and people unknown. In the “Age of European Exploration,” voyagers rounded southern Africa to cross the Indian Ocean, reaching India and the East Indies. Between 1519 and 1521, Portugal’s Ferdinand Magellan became the first person to circle the globe. In an unprecedented burst of new geographic knowledge, daring, and enterprise, explorers built outposts on newly discovered shores, creating the first global trade empires based on oceanic shipping ([link]). (See the Ship Technology Lesson.)

The Portuguese and the Spanish in the New World

The expansion was begun by Portugal, a kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. Sailing along the west coast of Africa, Portuguese mariners sought new sources of gold, ivory, pepper, and slaves. They slowly but steadily probed southward until 1498, when Vasco da Gama sailed around the continent’s southern tip and crossed the Indian Ocean to reach India.

Threats to Spanish Sovereignty

To even the military odds in Europe, the French, English, and Dutch wanted a share of the wealth being generated in the Americas. The quickest way to get it was to steal gold and silver from Spanish ships bound for Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of England ([link]) even sanctioned privateers, government-licensed pirates, to raid Spanish ships laden with New World treasure. During the 1580s and 1590s, Francis Drake, the most successful English pirate, sailed into the Pacific Ocean to capture Spanish ships along the Peruvian and Mexican coasts before heading west to complete his voyage around the globe. Lashing back, in 1588, Philip II sent an armada of warships to seize control of the English Channel and assist in an invasion of England. But the English navy and fierce storms combined to scatter and destroy most of the Spanish fleet. Thereafter, Spanish naval power declined while England and France expanded their commercial and colonial reach.

The French Arrive in the North

As the French found out in Florida in 1565, it was dangerous to settle too close to the Spanish colonies. The French did better when they probed the northern waters and coasts of Canada—a land the Spanish had dismissed as too cold and barren—in the early seventeenth century. The French hoped to find either precious metals or the fabled Northwest Passage through, or around, the continent to reach the Pacific and the trade riches of Asia. Failing in both goals, they instead discovered coastal waters teeming with fish and sea mammals: seals and whales. During the warmer months, French fishermen began to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Grand Banks near Newfoundland. In the fall, they sailed home with their catch, which they had dried in the sun and packed into barrels.

The English and the Atlantic Coast

While the Spanish dominated the southern part of North America and the French focused their efforts on northern waters, the intervening Atlantic coast became, by default, the target of English colonizers. The English named the region “Virginia,” after Queen Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen” who never married. In 1587, English adventurers built their first American settlement on Roanoke, a sandy island within the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina. Raising too few crops, they relied on taking food from the local Indians. Within a few years, the colony mysteriously disappeared, though historians are not sure whether by assimilation with the Croatan tribe or by a devastating attack. (See the Watercolors of Algonquian Peoples in North Carolina, 1585 Primary Source.)

Conclusion

By the early seventeenth century, Europeans had come by the thousands to dominate the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America. They built rival empires covering much of the Americas and competed to control the resources and Indians. Arriving first, the Spanish claimed the densest areas of Indian civilization in Mesoamerica. They also sustained weaker colonies along a broad northern frontier stretching from New Mexico to Florida. Arriving in smaller numbers, the French developed a far northern colony and relied on fishing and on trading furs with Indians living near their sparse settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley. They also formed military alliances with the Indians. The English came relatively late and claimed the temperate region best suited for family farms and tobacco plantations. Agriculture attracted and sustained many more immigrants in Virginia and New England than the French could muster for Canada or the Spanish could attract to Florida and New Mexico. In the contest to colonize North America, the English had the advantage of growing numbers but the disadvantage of fiercer Indian resistance. Despite initial military advantages, Europeans did not drive the Indians from the interior for another two centuries.

🔎 Native People

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain how and why various native populations in the period before European contact interacted with the natural environment in North America

🔎 First Contacts

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations
* Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period

🔎 Columbian Exchange

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492

🔎 Hernando de Soto

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain causes of the Columbian Exchanges and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
* Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time

🔎 Life in the Spanish Colonies

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
* Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time
* Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period

🔎 Origins of the Slave Trade

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time

🔎 Henry Hudson and Exploration

Abstract:
In this section, you will
* Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations

📍 Montezuma and Cortés

💬 Should We Remember Christopher Columbus as a Conqueror or Explorer?

Issue on the Table

Controversy has arisen over the validity of honoring Christopher Columbus. Should his actions be viewed through the lens of modern values, or should they be viewed within the context of his time?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question presented, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholar but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

The story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World is one of cruelty and greed. Departing Spain, Columbus sought a westward route to Asia and the riches it held. His accidental arrival in the Caribbean in 1492 proved frustrating for the explorer, because the islands held none of the spices he desired and only small amounts of gold. Repeated attempts to uncover rich kingdoms in his voyages of 1493, 1498, and 1502 further frustrated the man who became the governor of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Without access to easy riches, Columbus turned to the exploitation and enslavement of the Native Americans.

Claim B

In 1991, on the eve of the celebration marking five hundred years since Columbus discovered the Americas, the City Council of Berkeley, California, voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The council adopted the resolution in 1992. In so doing, they joined thousands of others who mistakenly deem Christopher Columbus as a villain whose greed-fueled voyages brought only death and destruction. Indeed, it is not uncommon for critics to use the loaded word “genocide” in the same sentence as Columbus. But there is more to the story. The vilification of Columbus is not justified.

✒ Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 1494

Introduction

Christopher Columbus made landfall on an island in what is now the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, after setting sail from Spain about two months earlier. He continued to explore the Caribbean, conquering the lands in the name of God, Spain, and his benefactors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Through his journeys, the Italian explorer encountered new cultures, flora and fauna, and enormous economic potential in the “New World.” Noting that inhabitants of the island wore gold jewelry, Columbus and his men set out to find gold deposits on the island. By the early sixteenth century, the Spanish had exhausted most of the gold deposits accessible through mining methods of that time, and the native Taino people were decimated by disease, forced labor, and murder.

✒ Cortés’s Account of Tenochtitlan, 1522

Introduction

Hernán Cortés arrived in what is now Mexico in 1519. He was sent by the Spanish king Charles V to explore more of the Caribbean territories, search for gold and other resources, and claim this land in the name of the king. In 1520, he and approximately three hundred men traveled to the interior of Mexico to the mighty Aztec Empire, which was ruled by King Montezuma II. Eventually, he was brought to the capital of this empire, Tenochtitlan, which is today known as Mexico City. This city was home to approximately twenty million people. By 1521, however, Cortés and his three hundred men managed to bring this great city under Spanish control. Cortés documented his two years in Mexico to his benefactor, King Charles V, in a series of letters.

✒ Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1552

Introduction

Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican priest who was one of the first Spanish settlers in the New World. After participating in the conquest of Cuba, Las Casas freed his own slaves and spoke out against Spanish cruelties and injustices in the empire. He argued for the equal humanity and natural rights of the Native Americans. Las Casas worked for the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity and for their better treatment. Pope Paul III agreed and issued an edict in 1537 banning the enslavement of Native Americans. The Spanish crown also agreed and banned in the 1542 New Laws the enslavement of Native American. In 1550, the crown abolished the *encomienda* system, which allowed the Spanish to seize Native Americans’ lands and force their labor. In 1552, Las Casas published a shocking account of Spanish cruelties, *A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies*. He blamed the depopulation of the Native American populations on Spanish brutality rather than on the spread of disease. This gave rise to the Black Legend, a legend that Protestant nations such as England and the Netherlands used as propaganda to denounce the imperial system of Catholic Spain and promote their own means of settlement, which they viewed as more peaceful and benevolent.

✒ <i>The Florentine Codex</i>, c. 1585

Introduction

European explorers unwittingly brought diseases with them as they made contact with the residents of the New World. These invisible microbes had devastating and profound consequences: Native Americans had never been exposed to diseases such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhoid, and therefore had no immunities. These diseases wreaked havoc on the Native American societies, wholly destroying some groups and severely weakening others. The following image ([link]) comes from *The Florentine Codex*, a compilation of materials and information on Aztec history organized by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and his students. The friar spent over fifty years studying Aztec culture and history, working on the Codex from 1545 until his death in 1590. The Codex consists of more than twenty-four hundred pages, with images drawn by Native American artists. The accompanying text was written in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people.

✒ The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy

Introduction

Very few written sources exist from the perspective of any North American Indians before European contact. This poses a huge challenge to scholars wishing to learn about the enormous economic, political, and cultural diversity of these groups before the arrival of Europeans. Historians are left with the archeological record, European accounts of first encounters, and Native American oral traditions. Oral traditions consist of stories handed down through generations, yet our records of these traditions were often compiled after European contact.

✒ Watercolors of Algonquian Peoples in North Carolina, 1585

Introduction

Tales of Spanish riches in the New World quickly spread throughout Europe. With the support of Queen Elizabeth I, English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to establish a permanent North American settlement as a harbor for English privateers to prey upon Spanish galleons hauling riches back to Spain. Raleigh also hoped to discover gold and silver in his own right, to find a water passage through the New World on to the riches of India and China, and to Christianize the Native Americans. Raleigh sponsored several voyages to achieve this goal. John White was an English artist who accompanied one of these expeditions looking for a place to establish Raleigh’s colony. White’s voyage took him to Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina in 1585. The group failed to establish a colony, but White produced many watercolor portraits of the Algonquian Indians he encountered during the year-long expedition. Two years later, Raleigh again attempted to establish a settlement at Roanoke Island. Raleigh’s colony had disappeared by 1590 and came to be known as the Lost Colony.

📝 Question Formulation Technique (QFT): Map of 1491 vs. 1754

I. Warm-up Activity (10 min)

1. Students should answer the following question on **Handout A: QFT Notes and Reflections** individually: How do historians use questions?

II. Exploration (20 min)

1. Students will participate in an exercise known as the Question Formulation Technique, or the QFT®. The QFT is designed to encourage students to ask their own questions, pique their interest in a subject, and build confidence in their historical thinking skills. Explain to students that they will be using the QFT today, which means they will be formulating questions on the basis of a prompt that will appear on the next slide, known as the QFocus. Have students read the four rules to the QFT aloud, which should be posted on the board:

III. Application (15–20 min)

1. Ask students to step back from their poster and read over the questions they generated as a group. Students should label their closed- and open-ended questions with a “c” or “o.”

IV. Conclusion (5 min)

Students will answer the reflection questions on **Handout A: QFT Notes and Reflections**. If time allows, ask students to share their reflections.

📝 Ship Technology

I. Warm-up Activity (10 min)

1. Task each group with identifying the top three tools or technologies that affect society today (students may suggest computers, modern medicine, cell phones, and so forth). As each group shares, compile a class list. Once all groups have shared, ask the students to come to a consensus on the defining technology of our era, based on their list.

II. Exploration (20 min)

1. Give each group a copy of **Handout B: Key Terms of the Age of Sail.** Have your students separate the key terms and match them with the images they think appropriate. Once identified, they should also put the ship images in chronological order.

III. Application (15 min)

Once the groups have matched all their terms, organized the images, and stated their significance, the groups should prepare a thesis statement in response to the following prompt. Students should cite evidence from this activity in defense of their thesis statement.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Have the class write their thesis statements on the board. Discuss these statements, helping students strengthen and clarify them. Probe their responses and ensure they use evidence in defense of their statements. Ask them to identify what additional information would have been helpful.

📝 Richard Hakluyt and the Case for Undertaking Sea Voyages

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min)

1. Students should respond individually to the following question: When is a time that you have taken a risk? Why did you commit to this action, as opposed to deciding that it was too risky?

II. Exploration (30–40 min)

1. Distribute **Handout A: Hakluyt Primary Source Packet** to students.

III. Application and Assessment (10–25 min)

Students will choose one the options below as their conclusion to the lesson:

📝 Paideia Seminar: Christopher Columbus

I. Warm-up Activity (5–20 min)

1. Before this lesson, students should be introduced to the concept of a Paideia Seminar and the purpose of the activity.

II. Exploration (20–40 min)

1. The teacher should be seated in the circle along with students. Remind students of the goals of the activity, and set the tone:

III. Application (10–25 min)

1. Continue the discussion using questions from the “Elaborate and Apply” section on **Handout B: Paideia Seminar Questions**. If you are using the fishbowl method, ensure that students in the first and second half of the discussion have the opportunity to answer “Explore” and “Elaborate and Apply” questions during their time.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

1. After the discussion, students should complete **Handout C: Paideia Seminar Reflection**. If time allows, students may reflect as a group on the experience of the Paideia Seminar format and how well they think they did as individuals and as a class. Students should also reflect on how they wish to continue to grow in this kind of activity in the future.

📝 Writing Practice: Building Thesis Statements

✏ Unit 1 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1607–1763

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 2 Introductory Essay: 1607–1763

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context for the colonization of North America from 1607 to 1754

Introduction

The sixteenth century brought changes in Europe that helped reshape the whole Atlantic world of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These events were the rise of nation states, the splintering of the Christian church into Catholic and Protestant sects, and a fierce competition for global commerce ([link]). Spain aggressively protected its North American territorial claims against imperial rivals, for example. When French Protestant Huguenots established Fort Caroline (Jacksonville, Florida, today) in 1564, Spain attacked and killed the settlers the following year. France, Britain, and Holland wanted their own American colonies, and privateers from these countries used safe havens along the coast of North America to raid Spanish treasure ships. But North America did not hold the gold and silver found in Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru. In the end, Spain concentrated on these more profitable portions of its empire, and other European nation states began to establish their own claims in North America.

England, France, and the Netherlands

By 1600, the stage had been set for competition between the European nations colonizing the Americas, and several quickly established footholds. The Spanish founded St. Augustine (in what is now Florida) in 1565. In 1607, English adventurers arrived at Jamestown in the Virginia colony (see The English Come to America Narrative). The French established Quebec in what today is Canada, in 1608. Spanish Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) was founded in 1610. The Dutch established Albany (now the capital of New York) as a trading center on the Hudson River in 1614, and New Amsterdam (called New York City today) in 1624. English Separatists, now known as Pilgrims, established Plymouth Colony in 1620. Ten years later, in 1630, Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. European settlement grew exponentially. Seventeenth-century North America became a place where diverse nations—European and Native American—came into close contact.

Trade

Native nations in North America sought the advantages of trade and the help of European allies to counter their enemies. But they also strove to control and resist the growing European presence on their land, using both diplomacy and military strikes. During the winter of 1609–1610, for example, Powhatan, an Algonquin chief and the father of Pocahontas, stopped trading with and providing food to the Jamestown settlers. His warriors laid siege to Jamestown and killed all who left the fort. During that winter, described by Englishmen as the “starving time,” Powhatan came close to ending the colony’s existence. Indians again waged war in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 and the Third Anglo-Powhatan War of 1644, but by that time, the English presence in Virginia was too strong to resist (see The Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 Narrative).

Slavery

Enslavement of Africans was introduced early in the settlement of the Americas. In the early 1500s, Spain imported enslaved Africans to the Caribbean to meet the high demand for labor. The Dutch played a key role in the Atlantic slave trade until the 1680s, when the English gained control and allowed colonial shippers to participate. The Atlantic slave trade consisted of transporting captives from the west coast of Africa to the Americas in what became known as the “Middle Passage.” The Middle Passage was one leg of a profitable triangular trade in the Atlantic. Ships transported raw materials from the Americas to Europe and then shipped manufactured goods and alcohol to Africa, where they were used to purchase human beings from the West Africans. Ships’ captains packed their human cargo of chained African men, women, and children into the holds of the ships, where roughly 10 to 15 percent died ([link]).

Religion

In 1620, a group of English separatists known as the Pilgrims settled at what today is known as Cape Cod Bay. The Pilgrims were “separatists” because they believed the protestant Church of England remained too close to Catholic doctrine, and they saw no other solution but to leave or separate from the church. Because they dissented from the established state church, they were persecuted, and they decided to leave England (see the Pilgrims to the New World Decision Point). The Pilgrims applied to the Virginia Company of London in 1619 and received a patent to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. When they reached North America, poor sailing conditions and treacherous waters forced them to settle at Cape Cod Bay instead, where they established the colony they called Plymouth ([link]).

The British Take Control

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the British consolidated their control over the eastern seaboard of North America. During the period 1675 to 1676, New England fought against the Wampanoag and their allies in what was called King Philip’s War. The conflict resulted in staggeringly high casualties on both sides and the physical expansion of colonies in New England. It helped convince the English government to revoke the Massachusetts charter and establish greater control over the colony (see the King Philip’s War Decision Point and the Maps Showing the Evolution of Settlement, 1624–1755 Primary Source).

War with France

By 1750, both Britain and France claimed the Ohio River Valley. In 1753, the French began building a series of forts there, on land claimed by British land companies such as the Ohio Company and the Loyal Company. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Robert Dinwiddie, an investor in the Ohio Company, sent a young Virginia militia major named George Washington to the Ohio country to warn the French to leave. They refused.

The Path to Revolution

That same year, 1763, a coalition of Great Lakes, Illinois region, and Ohio region American Indians went to war against the British. The British emerged victorious, but the Indian nations demonstrated they would not easily submit. Led by an Ottawa man named Pontiac, American Indians warred with British soldiers and colonists across the frontier from Detroit to the Ohio River Valley.

🔎 The English Come to America

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various European colonies developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754

🔎 The Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why interactions between various European nations and American Indians changed over time

🔎 The Founding of Maryland

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various European colonies developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why the movement of a variety of people and ideas across the Atlantic contributed to the development of American culture over time

🔎 Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why the movement of a variety of people and ideas across the Atlantic contributed to the development of American culture over time

🔎 William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various European colonies developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why interactions between various European nations and American Indians changed over time
* Explain how and why the movement of a variety of people and ideas across the Atlantic contributed to the development of American culture over time

🔎 The Fur Trade

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various European colonies developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain how and why interactions between various European nations and American Indians changed over time

🔎 Bacon’s Rebellion

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754
* Explain causes and effects of transatlantic trade over time
* Explain how and why the different goals and interests of European leaders and colonists affected how they viewed themselves and their relationship with Britain

🔎 The Salem Witch Trials

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754

🔎 The Stono Rebellion

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how enslaved people responded to slavery

🔎 The Great Awakening

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why the different goals and interests of European leaders and colonists affected how they viewed themselves and their relationship with Britain

🔎 Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment

🔎 Albany Plan of Union

🔎 A Clash of Empires: The French and Indian War

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War)

🔎 Wolfe at Quebec and the Peace of 1763

📍 Pilgrims to the New World

📍 King Philip’s War

💬 Colonial Identity: English or American?

Issue on the Table

Did the colonists have an English or American identity?

Instructions

Read each historian’s argument in response to the question presented, paying close attention to each author’s supporting evidence and reasoning. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the views in these essays are not necessarily the views of the scholars themselves but illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

It is easy to assume that settlers in English North America had always felt alienated from Britain and its empire—why else would they have left home to start a new life abroad? But their transition in identity was slower and more complicated than it first appears. Throughout the seventeenth century, when the first permanent colonies were established in America, most settlers’ identities remained stubbornly “English” rather than anything that could meaningfully be called “American.”

Claim B

Colonial Americans of the mid-eighteenth century were loyal members of the British empire who paid faithful homage to their king in London. They were also proud of the many liberties they enjoyed and understood that those freedoms had originated in the mother country; however, despite their devotion to their British heritage, Americans felt significantly more pride in the colonies they and their ancestors had established. Indeed, over the generations, they had built more than a dozen flourishing self-governing provinces along the eastern seaboard, where settlers largely directed their own economic, military, social, and political affairs. Without these long-established patterns of self-governance, British Americans would never have embarked upon independence in 1776.

💬 What Was the Great Awakening?

Issue on the Table

Was the “Great Awakening” a coherent religious movement or is it a construct of historians looking back at the time period?

Instructions

Read each historian’s argument in response to the question presented, paying close attention to each author’s supporting evidence and reasoning. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the views in these essays are not necessarily the views of the scholars themselves, but illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Some scholars have argued that the “Great Awakening” never happened, but rather was invented by evangelical historians in the nineteenth century. In 1982, a modern historian, Jon Butler, argued that some writers had exaggerated the cohesion and influence of the eighteenth-century revivals, which had been regional, short-lived, theologically diverse, and of limited importance. Above all, according to Butler, the revivals did not lead to the American Revolution. Although Butler’s argument challenged historians to think more carefully about the nature of these revivals, his notion that the Great Awakening was a fiction is not supported by the evidence. When considered in a larger chronological and geographic framework, it becomes clear that eighteenth-century revivals were interconnected, inclusive of several denominations, and long lasting. A closer look shows that these revivals had the potential to be radical and posed a strong challenge to the existing social order. Although the Great Awakening hardly caused the American Revolution, it helped to prepare colonists for a revolutionary movement against the British, because of the struggle for religious liberty by dissenters. Most importantly, the Great Awakening gave birth to the American evangelical movement, a development of enormous consequence in American life.

Claim B

Evangelicals in colonial America had long hoped for an extraordinary outpouring of God’s grace akin to that of the Day of Pentecost, described in the Bible as a great outpouring of God’s Spirit. They found the mighty “Work of God” they were looking for when large, enthusiastic crowds began attending preaching services during the revivals of 1740–1745. But they selected and arranged the facts into a story, and thus they set about fabricating the “Great Awakening.” However, not all Americans were convinced that the revivalists’ narrative reflected a factual rendering of events. Although revival leaders concluded that the evidence added up to a “great and general awakening,” an equally vociferous group contended that the revivals were only scattered, local events not uncommon among Protestants, and that they amounted only to a “small Thing.” These critics believed that the so-called Great Awakening was attended by more “Noise” than substance and that the narrative was the overblown creation of self-promoting enthusiasts.

✒ A City Upon a Hill: Winthrop’s “Modell of Christian Charity,” 1630

Introduction

In April 1630, a fleet of four ships set sail for New England carrying four hundred settlers bound for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Most were Puritans who traveled to North America to establish a godly society and a pure church free of what they considered corruptions in the Church of England. At some point before, during, or after the voyage, John Winthrop, their governor, delivered a sermon entitled, “A Model of Christian Charity,” for the settlers. Winthrop referred often to Scripture in creating the Puritan religious, political, and social covenant, or agreement. The most important covenant the settlers formed with God was to set an example of piety and virtue in their purified church. The political and social dimensions of the covenant would bind society together with mutual cooperation and obedience to the laws for the public good. “A Model of Christian Charity” is most famous for its assertion that the new colony would be “a city upon a hill,” a phrase which has been seized upon by politicians promoting a more secularized representation of America as a beacon of liberty and self-government for the world.

✒ Bacon vs. Berkeley on Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676

Introduction

In 1675, the Virginia colony was experiencing a great deal of tension between settlers and American Indians. Both sides engaged in fighting and retaliatory raids along the frontier because of disputed lands. Meanwhile, the colony was experiencing internal turmoil over increasing taxes, falling tobacco prices, increasing pressures to open more land for settlement, and growing questions over suspected corruption by long-term royal governor Sir William Berkeley. A recent wealthy migrant to the colony, Nathaniel Bacon, sat on the royal council. Bacon became a champion for the landless and poor when he urged the governor to send more armies against the American Indians. The colony split into factions supporting Bacon or Berkeley, who wished to avoid conflict with the American Indians in favor of stability and peace. Events soon descended into civil war: Rival armies fought each other and the capital, Jamestown, was burned. Order was only restored with the death of Bacon, the suppression of the rebellion, and the arrival of English troops.

✒ Penn’s Letter Recruiting Colonists, 1683

Introduction

English colonies were generally funded by joint-stock companies in which investors took significant risks but could reap great rewards. For more than a century, to induce investment and settlement, English sponsors and organizers of colonies wrote promotional literature with extravagant claims about settling in the New World. William Penn helped establish the Pennsylvania colony and acted as its governor. He understood that the success of his colony depended on a steady stream of settlers and financial support. In 1681, Penn encouraged the creation of The Free Society of Traders, a joint-stock company founded by a small group of Quakers in England. The members of this company were given concessions or privileges such as large tracts of land and seats on the Provincial Council in Philadelphia in return for their financial support of Penn’s colony. In this letter to The Free Society of Traders, Penn described Pennsylvania in glowing terms to encourage immigration and assure his investors they made a wise investment in his colony.

✒ Germantown Friends’ Antislavery Petition, 1688

Introduction

One of William Penn’s motives in establishing Pennsylvania was to provide a refuge for persecuted groups such as the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they were commonly known. Many Quakers became opponents of slavery because they believed in the equality of all men and women. A young German Quaker of the Germantown Friends drafted an antislavery petition, which was signed by three others living in Germantown (now part of Philadelphia) seven years after Pennsylvania’s founding. The document was intended to raise the issue of slavery as a matter of concern at an upcoming Quaker meeting in the nearby town of Dublin. In his argument against the evils of slavery, the author referenced the Bible to support the natural liberty of all humans and argued that slave owning in Pennsylvania hurt the colony’s reputation in Europe, thereby discouraging additional settlement to the colony.

✒ Washington's Journal: Expeditions to Disputed Ohio Territory, 1753–1754

Introduction

In 1753, the French were building forts around the Ohio River Valley to take firm possession of that territory against any expansion by the English. Virginia governor Robert A. Dinwiddie dispatched twenty-one-year-old George Washington to deliver a message to the French asserting Britain’s territorial claims. During his lengthy journey to modern-day Pittsburgh and beyond, he had many adventures on the frontier and was deeply involved with the events and imperial conflict that would lead to the French and Indian War less than a year later.

✒ Maps Showing the Evolution of Settlement, 1624–1755

Introduction

Major advances in cartography took place during the European Age of Exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The printing press made maps more widely available, and a renewed emphasis on geometry made them much more accurate in conveying physical features. Despite these advances, maps were still expensive, and settlers typically had to rely on the mother country to print and sell them. Explorers and colonizers needed maps, and some created their own as they explored new lands. Maps from the early colonial era outlined more than physical features of the land—they played an essential role in the encounters and struggles between Europeans and American Indians, as well as the clashing of European empires. As you examine these maps, think about how they reflect changes and continuities in English colonial claims from 1624 to 1755.

📝 Colonial Comparison: The Rights of Englishmen

I. Warm-up Activity (5–15 min)

1. Ask students to brainstorm a list of some constitutional principles and have them provide the definition of each. As students generate answers, write these principles on the board.

II. Exploration (20–40 min)

1. Have students read the Background section of **Handout A: The Rights of Englishmen, American Style** to provide the context for the comparison exercise. As a class, discuss any questions and observations that students may have related to this background.

III. Application (10–25 min)

1. Have students combine with another pair who read and annotated the other documents, jigsaw style. Each new group should include students who worked on all four documents. Have them compare with one another the annotations they made in their original working groups, giving special attention to constitutional principles.

IV. Conclusion/Assessment (5–15 min)

1. After students have completed the graphic organizer, they should answer the following questions. Then, conduct a whole-class discussion based on these debrief questions:

📝 Benjamin Franklin Mini DBQ

I. Warm-up Activity (10 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Benjamin Franklin: The First American?** Have students indicate if they would be pleased or not pleased with each scenario on their handout. Ask for volunteers to justify their responses.

II. Exploration (20 min)

Have students work individually or in groups, as best suits your teaching situation, to read the three primary sources and answer the comprehension and sourcing questions as they go along.

III. Application (15–20 min)

Redirect students to the prompt (on their handout and written on board): **“To what extent and in what ways did Benjamin Franklin reflect the conviction that “merit” or “talent” ought to bring rewards?”** Have students work individually to use highlighters to mark evidence in the documents provided, indicating support for the position they choose. Next, have students complete the last step in the packet to construct a thesis statement individually or in groups, as best suits your teaching situation.

IV. Conclusion (5 min)

Solicit volunteers to share their thesis and workshop several using the following questions:

📝 Mercantilism

I. Warm-up Activity (10 min)

**Political Cartoon Analysis**

II. Exploration (20 min)

Option 1: Distribute **Handout B: Mercantilism Background** and have students read and answer the questions. Discuss answers before distributing Handout C: Mercantilism Primary Sources. Tell students to look for the main ideas of mercantilism discussed in the background reading as they are analyzing the three primary sources.

III. Application (10 min)

In small group discussions, have the students discuss how mercantilism may have affected colonists in the following regions: the New England colonies, middle colonies, and southern colonies.

IV. Conclusion/Assessment (5 min)

Students will draw a political cartoon or infographic representing one region of the colonies and its mercantilist relationship with Great Britain.

📝 Civics Connection: The Colonial Origins of American Republicanism

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min)

Ask students to turn to one another in small groups and develop a response to this question: What kind of government does the United States have? After giving students a few minutes to discuss the question, call for their responses and write on the board a few key concepts that they mention. Because democracy and republic are often used interchangeably and many students may say the United States is a democracy, this will be an ideal time to direct students’ attention to the important differences between the terms, emphasizing that the United States is a republic. **Distribute the Handout B: Principles and Virtues Glossary** and **Handout A: The Colonial Origins of American Republicanism Student Packet.** Have students focus on the definitions of **democracy** and **republic** on the first page of the glossary and ask: “How would you know if your government demonstrates republicanism?” Answers should reflect student understanding that, to demonstrate republicanism, the government must be based on the idea that legitimate power comes from the people themselves (popular sovereignty and consent), and they freely elect representatives to make and carry out the laws.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

1. Have students turn their attention to **Handout A: The Colonial Origins of American Republicanism Student Packet.** Assign the background and primary source readings to students. Assign the readings as best fits your teaching situation (small groups, jigsaw, and so forth). Depending on your students’ background, you may wish to walk students through the Mayflower Compact page as a whole class, modeling a think-aloud strategy to answer the questions provided and to identify the principles reflected in the Compact.

III. Application (10–25 min)

1. Depending on the method you used to have students do the initial reading and analysis, conduct a discussion that allows students to consider all the documents. They may share their responses as a whole class, in the second stage of jigsaw groups, through inner/outer circle discussion, Socratic activities, and so forth. See **Handout D: Using the Inner and Outer Circle Discussion Technique** for suggested guidelines on this discussion method.

IV. Conclusion/Assessment (5–15 min)

Conclude after the discussion by having students write an individual response to the guiding question and collect their responses.

✏ Unit 1 Essay Activity

I. Warm Up

1. Students will read through the **Handout A: Long Essay Rubric**, focusing on the thesis and evidence points. Students should highlight in one color the area of the rubric about which they feel most confident and highlight in a second color the area of the rubric about which they feel the least confident.

II. Exploration

1. Two student volunteers should read aloud the two options on **Handout B: Long Essay Options and Outline** for the essay questions.

III. Application

1. Students should share their written outlines with a partner. At this time, students should not discuss or clarify their outlines but rather allow their partner to provide them feedback on **Handout C: Peer Feedback** using the Praise, Polish, and Pose method.

IV. Conclusion

1. After the teacher has had the opportunity to evaluate student outlines based on the rubric, students should be provided the opportunity to reflect on their writing progress and set intentional goals for growth, using **Handout D: Writing Reflection**.

1763–1800

1763–1789

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 3 Introductory Essay: 1763–1789

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the context in which America gained independence and developed a sense of national identity

Introduction

The American Revolution remains an important milestone in American history. More than just a political and military event, the movement for independence and the founding of the United States also established the young nation’s political ideals and defined new governing structures to sustain them. These structures continue to shape a country based on political, religious, and economic liberty, and the principle of self-government under law. The “shot heard round the world” (as poet Ralph Waldo Emerson described the battles of Lexington and Concord) created a nation that came to inspire the democratic pursuit of liberty in other lands, bringing a “new order of the ages” ([link]).

From Resistance to Revolution

As British subjects, the colonists felt flush with patriotism after the Anglo-American victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). They were proud of their king, George III, and of the “rights of Englishmen” that made them part of a free and prosperous world empire. Although Britain’s policies after the French and Indian War caused disputes and tensions between the crown and its North American colonies, independence for the colonies was not a foregone conclusion. Instead, the desire for independence emerged as a result of individual decisions and large-scale events that intensified the conflict with Great Britain and helped unite the diverse colonies.

From Lexington and Concord to Independence

Some Patriots in the colonies sought more radical solutions than reconciliation. Early in 1775, Patrick Henry tried to rouse the Virginia House of Burgesses to action:

War and Peace

For independence to be secured, the war had to be fought and won. British generals aimed to secure the port cities, expand British influence, and gradually win the population back to a position of loyalty. They commanded a professional army but had to subdue the entire eastern seaboard. General Washington, on the other hand, learned how to keep the Continental Army in the field and take calculated risks in the face of a British force superior in number, training, and supplies. The support of the individual states, and the congressional effort to secure allies, were essential to the war effort, but they were not guaranteed. The British sent an army of nearly thirty-two thousand redcoats and German mercenaries. They also enjoyed naval supremacy and expected that their more-experienced generals would win an easy victory over the provincials. The campaigns of 1776, thus, were about survival.

Confederation and Constitution

The 1780s witnessed tensions between those who wished to maintain a decentralized federation and others who believed the United States needed a new constitutional republic with a strengthened national government. The first framework of government, the Articles of Confederation, sufficed for winning the war and resolving states’ disputes over land west of the Appalachians. Yet many believed the government created by the Articles had almost lost the war because it did not adequately support the army, and after the war it had failed to govern the nation adequately. With the nation’s independence recognized, Americans had to build a stable government in the place of the British government they had thrown off. Important debates emerged about the size and shape of the nation, continuities and breaks with the colonial past, and the character of a new governing system for a free people. Debates took place not only in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 but also in public discussions afterward in the states. Throughout the process, Americans considered various constitutional forms, but they agreed on the significance of constitutional government.

🔎 Pontiac's Rebellion

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the causes and effects of the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War)

🔎 Stamp Act Resistance

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how British colonial policies regarding North America led to the Revolutionary War

🔎 The Boston Massacre

🔎 The Boston Tea Party

🔎 Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how and why colonial attitudes about government and the individual changed in the years leading up to the American Revolution

🔎 Washington Crossing the Delaware

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how British colonial policies regarding North America led to the Revolutionary War
* Explain how various factors contributed to the American victory in the Revolution

🔎 The Battle of Saratoga and the French Alliance

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how various factors contributed to the American victory in the Revolution

🔎 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

🔎 Shays' Rebellion

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how different forms of government developed and changed as a result of the Revolutionary Period

🔎 The Constitutional Convention

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how different forms of government developed and changed as a result of the Revolutionary Period
* Explain the differing ideological positions on the structure and function of the federal government

🔎 The Ratification Debate on the Constitution

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the differing ideological positions on the structure and function of the federal government

🔎 Mercy Otis Warren

📍 George Washington at Newburgh

📍 Loyalist vs. Patriot

📍 Signing the Declaration of Independence

📍 The Annapolis Convention

💬 Is the Constitution a Proslavery Document?

Issue on the Table

Did the framers of the Constitution, as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, and some contemporary historians claim, create a proslavery document, or did they, as Douglas’s contemporary Abraham Lincoln and other historians claim, create a document that put slavery on the path to ultimate extinction?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question presented, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

The answer to the question of whether the Constitution is a proslavery document is not to be found in the six-week controversy over representation of the people or representation of the states within which the Three-Fifths Clause is located. This clause has much to do with the census and little to do with the inherent worth of an individual. Nevertheless, historians turn to this clause to argue that the framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution. Nor is the answer to be found in the Fugitive Slave Clause. Note that the clause is based on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 in which slavery is banned, and the language of the clause is significantly different from the extradition clause that immediately precedes it.

Claim B

The truth of the matter is that the Founders were not a monolithic group who favored one stance or another on any issue, including slavery. Instead, the founders were individuals who sought different objectives and had differing views. Some founders, like Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Rutledge, and Pierce Butler, all from South Carolina, were proslavery. Other founders, like Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and Rufus King of Massachusetts, were antislavery. Proslavery forces fought tooth and nail to protect it, whereas antislavery forces tried their best to contain it.

💬 Were the Anti-Federalists Unduly Suspicious or Insightful Political Thinkers?

Issue on the Table

Were the Anti-Federalists incoherent and out of touch with the current political realities as their Federalists opponents claimed, or did they offer insightful warnings about complex issues that would plague the United States under the Constitution?

Instructions

Claim A

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists agreed that dependence on the people, expressed through frequent and regular elections, is the necessary condition to secure the blessings of liberty. Both sides in the debate over the Constitution’s ratification also agreed that dependence on the election system alone to protect liberty was insufficient. But they disagreed on the main danger to republican liberty and the best remedy to that danger.

Claim B

The Anti-Federalists were neither a political party nor a homogenous group of opponents to the ratification of the Constitution. Nor did they defend the Articles of Confederation as the best constitution for the United States. Their diversity and inability to present a spirited defense of the Articles cast them as mere opponents to needed reform. But the Anti-Federalists left an enduring legacy through their common substantive critiques of the Constitution and by their rhetorical tactics, which pressed the Federalists to make important concessions.

✒ John Dickinson, <i>Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania</i>, 1767–1768

Introduction

In 1767 and 1768, John Dickinson, a lawyer and landowner in Pennsylvania, published a series of twelve letters in opposition to the Townshend Acts. These letters, all signed “A Farmer,” laid out a case against the acts. Dickinson argued that the British parliament had the right to regulate trade with the colonies within the imperial system, but that the colonies were sovereign to regulate their own internal matters. This included raising revenue. Dickinson argued that the acts were an unjustifiable expansion of British authority over the colonies, which was not only bad for the colonies but bad for the entire imperial system.

✒ Thomas Paine, <i>Common Sense</i>, 1776

Introduction

Published in January 1776, *Common Sense* makes a moral and political argument for American independence from Great Britain. The pamphlet’s straightforward prose and clearly articulated argument were extremely popular in the colonies. The argument in the pamphlet captivated the nation and helped move the country toward independence. The pamphlet was written by Thomas Paine, a recent arrival in Philadelphia and known political agitator, yet he published the pamphlet anonymously. Paine would continue to write passionately in favor of independence, publishing *The Crisis* in December of 1776. After the revolution, Paine would head to France, where he used his pen to advocate on behalf of the French Revolution. He died in New York in 1809.

✒ Joseph Plumb Martin, <i>The Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier</i>, 1777

Introduction

Joseph Plumb Martin of Connecticut eagerly joined the cause of the Revolution in 1776 at the age of fifteen years. He served in the Continental Army for almost seven years, keeping detailed diaries of his experiences. In 1830, the seventy-year-old Martin published *A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier.* Martin’s book provides abundant evidence of soldiers’ demonstration of the ideals of courage, initiative, self-reliance, persistence, and devotion to duty, and it paints a vivid picture of how callous civilians were toward the army. Martin wrote that many aging veterans felt most Americans just wanted to forget about the war and the sacrifices made for liberty. At the time, Martin’s memoir did not sell well. A first edition of Martin’s book was rediscovered in the 1950s and republished, providing a valuable firsthand account of his adventures and sufferings. In November 1777, with British forces firmly in control of Philadelphia, the Continental capital, Martin was among about 400 American soldiers defending nearby Fort Mifflin against a five-day British siege by more than 2,000 British troops and 250 ships.

✒ Art Analysis: Washington Crossing the Delaware

Introduction

On a cold night in December 1776, the situation was desperate for General Washington’s army. His men were in disarray and being pursued by a professional army of one of the most powerful countries on earth. In desperation, Washington decided to cross the Delaware River and lead a surprise attack on a Hessian garrison camped in Trenton, New Jersey. Seventy-five years after this event, German artist Emanuel Leutze created his famous depiction of this scene. Leutze grew up in America but returned to Germany as an adult. He painted this work during the revolutions of 1848, a series of political upheavals throughout Europe. The painting is large at just over 12 feet high by 21 feet long. Leutze took several artistic liberties in his work. Most of Washington’s army crossed the river in shallow Durham boats—wide, flat boats with high sides. The high walls were sturdy enough to survive crossing an icy river. The men likely would have stood as they crossed, because the bottom of the boats would be wet, cold, and uncomfortable. Horses and artillery went across in larger ferries. The men crossed at around eleven o’clock at night in the middle of a strong storm that brought wind, freezing rain, and snow. Look carefully at the painting for several moments before answering the questions that follow.

✒ The Articles of Confederation, 1781

Introduction

The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States. Sent to the states for ratification in November of 1777, it established a confederation government that consisted of thirteen sovereign states and a limited central government. The Articles were ratified in 1781 and remained the governing document for the nation until it was replaced by the Constitution in 1789.

✒ Quaker Anti-Slavery Petition, 1783

Introduction

As early as 1688, the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, recorded their opposition to slavery in the form of a petition (see Germantown Friends’ Antislavery Petition, 1688 in chapter 2). Nearly a century after the Quakers in Germantown had advocated abolition, Quakers meeting in Philadelphia crafted another antislavery petition, this time with 534 signatures. In 1783, they presented their “Address to the United States in Congress Assembled.” Antislavery sentiment was gaining strength in northern states; a 1780 Pennsylvania law made that state the first to implement a plan of gradual abolition, and in 1783, slavery was abolished outright in Massachusetts by court decision. Slavery was still legal in all other states, though its direct impact on the northern economy was dwindling. The Quakers knew their petition would face stiff opposition in Congress. The Revolutionary War ended in 1781, and the foreign slave trade, suspended during the war, resumed. That same year saw the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, which created a “firm league of friendship,” not a strong national government. The Confederation Congress had no power over state governments or their individual citizens.

✒ Belinda Sutton, Petition to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1783

Introduction

Belinda Sutton was an enslaved woman in the Royall household, the largest slave-owning family in Massachusetts. The Royall family amassed their fortune by trading sugar, rum, and slaves. During the American Revolution, Isaac Royall was a Loyalist and, therefore, was exiled by Massachusetts in the 1778 Act of Banishment. In 1783, Sutton petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for an income from his estate. This petition is among the earliest narratives by an African American woman and it has been interpreted by some historians as the first call for reparations for slavery. Some scholars believe that an abolitionist named Prince Hall helped Sutton draft her narrative.

✒ The Northwest Ordinance, 1787

Introduction

During the sweltering summer of 1787, while the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention sweated and debated the framework of a new government, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. This legislation created the Northwest Territory, established a government for the territory, and outlined the process by which it would be divided into new states and how those states would be admitted into the Union. The Northwest Territory covers the area occupied by the modern-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. The Northwest Ordinance is generally seen as one of the most important acts of the Confederation Congress.

✒ Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes," 1790

Introduction

Judith Sargent Murray was among America's earliest champions of female equality. Murray was the oldest of eight children born to a wealthy ship-owning family in the colonial seaport of Gloucester, Massachusetts. As a child, Murray received a typical education for a daughter in a wealthy merchant family: reading, writing, and domestic activities such as sewing. Much of her knowledge beyond these topics was self-taught from perusing her family library. Murray wrote poetry from a young age but did not publish publicly until 1784, under the pen name Constantia. Her landmark essay “On the Equality of the Sexes” appeared in the March and April issues of the *Massachusetts Magazine* in 1790. More poems, plays, and a book entitled *The Gleaner* followed in 1798.

✒ Junípero Serra’s Baja California Diary

Introduction

Junípero Serra was born in 1713 on the island of Majorca, located off the coast of Spain. In 1737, Serra was ordained a priest in the Franciscan Order, and, at the age of thirty-five, he left for the New World with a group of fellow Franciscans to work as missionaries in New Spain (now Mexico). While he was there, the Spanish began expanding northward into what is today the U.S. state of California. They hoped to expand their region of influence and prevent Russia and Great Britain from making any claims to the land first. Additionally, Spain hoped to Christianize the native population in order to save souls and establish cultural connections. Serra, who had only interacted with Native Americans who were already converted to Catholicism, jumped at the opportunity to proselytize to native people who had never encountered missionaries before. During his nearly four-month trip from Baja California to San Diego in 1769, Serra kept a diary of his experiences.

📝 Acts of Parliament

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–15 min)

1. Students will answer the Warm-Up question on **Handout A: Acts of Parliament**: “Describe the relationship between the American colonies and the British government in 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War.”

II. Exploration (35–40 min)

1. Assign all students a number from 1 to 7 (or however many acts will be used). Students should then move to be seated by number with their assigned partners to read and annotate the corresponding act of Parliament excerpt on **Handout B: Excerpts from Acts of Parliament** according to the directions on **Handout A: Acts of Parliament**.

III. Application (15–20 min)

Using **Handout C: Poster Planning, Graphic Organizer, and Conclusion Questions,** students will participate in a gallery walk of the other groups’ posters to record information in the chart. Students will visit each poster and complete the information on the chart for each act. Students should work with their peers to complete the final question in the chart at each poster. Depending on the number of students in the class, the amount of time students have at each poster may be limited and students can be rotated by setting a timer. Alternatively, students can move through this section of the lesson at their own pace.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–10 min)

Students will answer the Conclusion Questions on **Handout C: Poster Planning, Graphic Organizer, and Conclusion Questions.**

📝 Abigail Adams: "Remember the Ladies" Mini DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

To set the stage for the correspondence they are about to analyze, ask students to recall what was happening in July 1775 in Boston, MA.

II. Exploration (20–40 min)

Have students, working in small groups, analyze **Document 1: John to Abigail, John to Abigail, July 7, 1775, and October 29, 1775,** answer the questions that accompany the letter excerpts. After they have worked through this document, have students move on to do the same thing with the remaining documents in sequence.

III. Application (10–25 min)

After small groups have worked through the documents, lead a class discussion of questions such as:

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Have each student write a thesis statement to the Mini DBQ prompt: ***Analyze the impact of the nascent American Revolution on the status of women.***

📝 The Path to Independence

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

1. At the beginning of class, have a student volunteer read aloud the passage on **Handout A: Key Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776**. Then, give students a few minutes to individually jot down their answers to the Review Questions below the excerpt.

II. Exploration (40 min)

Note: 40 min: 25 min to explore individual documents in small groups; 15 min for groups to report on their documents and for the class to fill in the graphic organizer

III. Application (10–25 min)

Once each group has presented, allow students about five minutes to answer the following questions individually, filling in **Handout I: Discussion Questions and Exit Ticket**:

Have students complete the final statements on **Handout I: Discussion Questions and Exit Ticket** as an exit ticket: 6. Name at least three elements of the Declaration of Independence that are seen in the earlier documents. 7. The most important similarity among the documents from 1765 to 1776 is _______________. 8. The most important difference among the documents is ____________________.

📝 Constitutional Convention

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

Students will independently answer the four questions on **Handout A: The Constitutional Convention**. If possible, students can refer to the Articles of Confederation itself to support their answers.

II. Exploration (40 min)

1. Students will read the first four paragraphs of **The Constitutional Convention** Narrative and use **Handout A: The Constitutional Convention.** As they read, students should write down deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation that are noted in the text, using the first column of the chart on the Lesson Handout.

III. Application (15 min)

Students will answer eight “Drawing Conclusions” questions:

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (20 min)

Students will write a paragraph in response to the Evaluation question, “To what extent did the Constitution achieve a ‘more perfect Union’ and a government better able to govern and protect natural rights?” Students should provide a clear thesis statement and support their argument with evidence from the Articles of Confederation, the portion of the Narrative that was used in the activity, or the Constitution. If necessary, students could complete this portion of the lesson for homework. An alternate form of assessment is to have students develop political cartoons that illustrate the similarities and differences between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, as well as highlighting relevant constitutional principles.

📝 Argumentation: The Process of Compromise

I. Warm-Up Activity (10–15 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Warm-Up Scenario and Reflection Questions** to students. Allow students to answer the questions individually or discuss with a partner or small group. After a few minutes, call the class together and lead a brief class discussion on student responses and comments.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Distribute **Handout B: Background Essay and Questions: The Great Compromise of 1787**. Have students read the essay and answer the questions that follow. Collect student responses for a grade or discuss when students have completed them, as best suits your classroom.

III. Application (25–30 min)

\*Students need access to computers\* Students should explore The Quill Project website and complete the **Handout C: The Quill Project: The Process of Compromise**. Note that students will watch an introductory video and should have headphones available. Alternatively, play the video for the class and then allow students to explore the site individually, in pairs, or in small groups.

Have students respond to one of the following prompts:

📝 Federalist/Anti-Federalist Debate on Congress's Powers of Taxation DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Instruct students to consider the warm-up questions on the student handout. Students may write down their answers, brainstorm with a partner, or conduct a brief discussion on each question.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Have students work individually or in groups as best suits your teaching situation to read the following documents and answer the comprehension and sourcing questions as they go along.

III. Application (15–20 min)

Redirect students to the prompt: **Evaluate the arguments for and against entrusting a national legislature with the power of taxation.** Have students work individually to use highlighters to mark evidence in the documents provided, indicating support for the position they choose. Next, have students complete the last step in the packet to construct a thesis statement individually or in groups, as best suits your teaching situation.

IV. Conclusion (5 min)

Solicit volunteers to share their thesis and workshop several using the following questions:

📝 State Constitution Comparison

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

Working either independently, in small groups, or through whole-class instruction, students read the background essay, **Handout A: New State Constitutions,** and answer the Review Questions.

II. Exploration (15 min)

Divide the class into three Exploration groups and assign each group to read one of the state constitution excerpts: **Handout B: Constitution of Virginia, 1776 (excerpts), Handout C: Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1776 (excerpts),** or **Handout D: Constitution of Massachusetts, 1780 (excerpts)**. Then, each group will work together to answer the Review Activities for their assigned handout.

III. Application (20 min)

After groups have completed the Review Activities, use a jigsaw (or similar) strategy to rearrange the groups. Each new group should include at least one student who worked with each of the three state constitutions. Students will share their information and fill in **Handout E: State Constitution Comparison** within their Application small groups. Take care that students are actually discussing how each constitution demonstrates each of the principles as they complete the graphic organizer. Have them conclude the Application activity by listing at least three similarities and three differences among the three state constitutions, as directed at the end of **Handout E**.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (20 min)

Students, working in their Application groups, will use the markers and chart paper to illustrate their comparisons through a visual representation. Alternatively, they could develop a slideshow using computers. The visual representation could be in the form of cartoons, stick figures, or other images. The visual representation must contain the following elements for each constitution:

📝 Argumentation: Self-Interest or Republicanism?

I. Warm-Up Activity (10–15 min)

Students need access to computers or mobile devices to consult the website Great Seal (http://greatseal.com/index.html).

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Introduce the Beard thesis by having students read aloud the introduction on **Handout A: Charles A. Beard, *An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States***. Have students read the handout and answer the questions individually or in small groups, as best suits your classroom.

III. Application (25–30 min)

Distribute **Handout B: Essay: What Principles Motivated the Founders: Economic Self-Interest or Republicanism?** Have students read the essay and answer the questions that follow. Collect student responses for a grade or discuss when students have completed them, as best suits your classroom.

✏ Unit 2 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1789–1800

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 4 Introductory Essay: 1789–1800

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will

* Explain the context in which America gained independence and developed a sense of national identity

Introduction

In 1789, Americans had the opportunity to govern themselves under a new constitutional government ratified one year earlier, in 1788, after a contentious debate. Chosen unanimously by the Electoral College, George Washington was to serve as president and, with the other branches of government, achieve an expansive vision of the American republic. Having learned several lessons from the problems of the Articles of Confederation in the 1780s, Washington sought to build the nation with an energetic national government, a prosperous economy, and a strong national defense.

Creating the National Government

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was inaugurated in a ceremony whose every detail conveyed both solemn dignity and an affirmation of republican principles. Dressed in a brown suit that represented republican simplicity, Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall so his fellow citizens might witness the event. He took seriously his constitutional duties to enforce the rule of law as executive and was conscious of setting the right tone and lasting precedents for the office. A congressional debate took place concerning presidential titles, and the members of the First Federal Congress ultimately settled on simply “President of the United States” rather than an elaborate monarchical title. (See the George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789 Primary Source.)

Alexander Hamilton’s Financial Plan

Before adjourning, the first Congress requested that Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton make a report on the nation’s credit and an accounting of its massive war debts. In mid-January 1790, Hamilton submitted his report on public credit ([link]). He calculated the national government owed \$42 million and the state governments owed a combined \$25 million (though most southern states had paid much of their debt). He proposed that the federal government offer to redeem the debt certificates issued during the war, paying their face value to their current owners, mostly speculators who had bought up the certificates cheaply from the veterans who had originally owned them. He also proposed that the federal government assume the debts of the states. Through these actions, Hamilton hoped to get the American financial house in order and thus secure its international credit, win the allegiance of the merchant class, strengthen the national government, and lay the foundation for future growth of the market economy.

The Rise of Political Parties

The conflicting visions of Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians led to the development of political parties despite the revolutionary generation’s negative view of them. The new republic had not yet developed the idea that opposing political views could still be loyal and patriotic, and the wide chasm that opened between these contending views seemed threatening to the stability of the new nation. The two sides battled intensely in Congress, in newspapers, and in elections.

Slavery in the New Republic

In 1793, two important events related to slavery occurred, though they received relatively little attention at the time. In February, on the basis of the constitutional authority of the fugitive slave clause in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, the Fugitive Slave Act passed Congress overwhelmingly after modest debate. The law protected the right of a slaveholder to recover runaway slaves. The second event was the invention of the cotton gin, which became commercially available that year. This technological innovation fundamentally strengthened and expanded slavery by enabling the rapid expansion of cotton production. The growth of cotton spread in states on the southwestern frontier such as Alabama and Mississippi. Moreover, Kentucky and Tennessee entered the Union as slave states in the mid-1790s.

Neutrality and the Genêt Affair

Another source of disagreement between the Jeffersonian-Republicans and the Federalists arose over the principles and policies of foreign affairs. The members of the administration had to decide the right course for the new republic. During the early 1790s, the United States had a weak national defense but aspirations to become a great country that could compete in a world of powerful nation-states and empires. Above all, a consensus existed that for the near future, the nation should expand its trade with other nations while avoiding costly wars. However, the sympathy of the Federalists for Great Britain and of the Jeffersonian-Republicans for France complicated American diplomacy at the outbreak of war in Europe.

The Frontier and Westward Expansion

Although the foreign policy crisis was diffused, the administration faced new challenges, this time on the frontier during the following year. In 1791, the Congress had passed an excise tax on alcohol, including rum and whiskey, to raise revenue to meet the nation’s debt obligations. Although New England rum makers paid the tax with little trouble, farmers on the frontier in several states resisted the tax and challenged federal authority. The violence was particularly severe in Pennsylvania, where mobs tarred and feathered tax collectors, used grindstones to cut off their noses, and burned the property of distillers who complied and paid the tax. The rebels forcibly closed courts and menacingly set up mock guillotines, imitating the excesses of the French Revolution.

The Jay Treaty and the Pinckney Treaty

As the frontier was being pacified, trouble with Europe started again when the British Royal Navy seized hundreds of U.S. vessels and impressed their sailors into service. Washington dispatched Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate an end to the crisis and other unresolved issues from the Revolutionary War, such as American debts to British merchants and enslaved persons seized by the British. Jay secured the best treaty he could. The British agreed to evacuate western forts and allowed small American ships to once again trade with the West Indies in exchange for most-favored-nation trade status for Great Britain.

The Election of 1796 and the Quasi-War with France

In the first contested presidential election, Vice President John Adams and Thomas Pinckney ran on separate tickets for the Federalists, and Thomas Jefferson and New Yorker Aaron Burr ran for the Republicans. Before passage of the Twelfth Amendment, the candidates with the two highest vote totals became president and vice president. The result in 1796 was a divided administration, with Adams as president and Jefferson as vice president. The election did not portend the diminishing of partisan tensions. During the campaign, the Federalists had fought among themselves almost as much as with Jeffersonian-Republicans, and the mostly southern Republicans had made inroads into Federalist support in the North.

Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

During the Quasi-War, the Federalists in Congress pushed through controversial laws that seemed to violate civil liberties. Adams did not seek the measures, but he signed them into law. A new naturalization act extended the period of naturalization from five to fourteen years, and two Alien Acts allowed the president to detain and deport alien enemies deemed a national security threat. These acts were not enforced during the Quasi-War.

The Election of 1800

As the new nation’s first decade came to a close, the election of 1800 became a high point of partisanship, with the rival parties engaging in vicious personal attacks during the campaign. Jeffersonian-Republicans warned of monarchy and the destruction of liberty under Adams if he won. Federalists warned of the spread of atheism and the horrors of the French Revolution if Jefferson were elected. The vote yielded a tie between the two Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The Constitution provided a remedy for a deadlock or lack of a necessary majority in the Electoral College by empowering the House to vote on the three candidates who received the most votes, and to vote by states as an expression of the principle of federalism. Jefferson was elected on the thirty-sixth ballot in the House of Representatives and became the nation’s third president.

🔎 Alexander Hamilton and the National Bank

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how and why political ideas, institutions, and party systems developed and changed in the new republic

🔎 James Madison and the Bill of Rights

🔎 Benjamin Franklin and the First Abolitionist Petitions

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the continuities and changes in regional attitudes about slavery as it expanded from 1754 to 1800

🔎 Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the continuities and changes in regional attitudes about slavery as it expanded from 1754 to 1800
* Explain the causes and effects of the innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce over time

🔎 The Battle of Fallen Timbers

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how and why competition intensified conflicts among peoples and nations from 1754 to 1800
* Explain how and why migration and immigration to and within North America caused competition and conflict over time

🔎 The Jay Treaty

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain how and why competition intensified conflicts among peoples and nations from 1754 to 1800

🔎 The XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War with France

🔎 The Alien and Sedition Acts

📍 Robert Carter and Manumission

📍 The Compromise of 1790

📍 George Washington and the Proclamation of Neutrality

💬 The Whiskey Rebellion: Unjust Taxation or Enforcing the Rule of Law?

Issue on the Table

Was the Whiskey Rebellion a justified revolt by farmers who opposed taxation or did the Washington administration act appropriately to enforce constitutional rule of law?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question above, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

The Whiskey Rebellion was a justified revolt by farmers who felt oppressed. They believed the taxes imposed resembled those collected by the British Parliament, which had been a major factor in instigating the American Revolutionary War. In resisting the tax, the whiskey rebels tapped into a long history of tax protest against central authority. The Washington administration’s display of force was excessive and the presidential pardons that followed gave credit to the suffering that the whiskey rebels had endured. After the uprising had been put down without confrontation, Thomas Jefferson observed that “an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, and marched against . . . but could never be found.”

Claim B

In the early 1790s, with the adoption of the new Constitution and the elevation of the most trusted figure in the country, George Washington, to the presidency, Americans were optimistic. Yet many of the fundamental problems the nation faced continued. Among these ongoing issues was the need to put the United States on a firm financial footing. The new nation faced not only the task of paying back Revolutionary War debts owed to its own citizens and foreign countries but also the need to stabilize and grow the economy for the long term. Both projects demanded raising taxes for revenue to reduce the national debt. The future of the United States depended on the strong credit of the new government. It also depended on the constitutional supremacy of the federal government and congressional laws, which rested on a shakier foundation than it might seem from our modern vantage point.

💬 “Strict” or “Loose”: Was the National Bank Constitutional?

Issue on the Table

How did Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson interpret the Constitution differently during the debate over the creation of a national bank in the early republic?

Instructions

Claim A

Alexander Hamilton’s proposal that Congress charter a national bank sparked a constitutional debate that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson sought to resolve through proper constitutional interpretation. Jefferson and Madison believed constitutions must be interpreted strictly and carefully to appropriately apply the fundamental laws they contained. Misinterpretation threatened constitutional government.

Claim B

The first great political controversy over the meaning of the Constitution took place early in 1791, while Congress was debating a proposal to issue a charter of incorporation to the Bank of the United States. That proposal was the work of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Its two chief opponents were Virginia congressman James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. The legislative powers of Congress enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution did not include the substantive authority to issue charters of incorporation. Madison well remembered—because he had proposed it—that the Federal Convention of 1787 had discussed vesting that power in Congress. The Convention rejected that motion, and Madison and Jefferson could thus believe that the power to grant charters of incorporation did not belong to Congress. In the eighteenth century, that power was still regarded as a substantial legal privilege rather than a routine or convenient way to charter ordinary businesses. Its exclusion from Article I, Section 8 was thus significant.

✒ George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Introduction

George Washington was unanimously elected the nation’s first president by the Electoral College on February 4, 1789. Washington was selected because he was the heroic, victorious general of the American Revolution and for his character. Because he had surrendered his military commission to the Congress, the American people believed Washington could be trusted with the power to be the new republic’s first chief executive. Washington had served the republic and wanted to retire in peace at Mount Vernon. When his countrymen called him to be the first president, he reluctantly answered the call. After composing a seventy-one–page inaugural address, Representative James Madison persuaded Washington to reduce its length significantly and focus on the political principles animating the new republic. On April 30, 1789, he took his constitutional oath of office on a balcony of New York’s Federal Hall before a crowd of citizens and dignitaries. The new president then delivered his first inaugural address to the Congress.

✒ The Judiciary Act of 1789

Introduction

In contrast to the detailed enumeration of the powers of Congress in Article I of the Constitution, or the general description of the powers of the president found in Article II, Article III addresses the judicial branch in only a few brief paragraphs. The framers left the details of creating a federal court system to the First Congress. For example, where the Constitution addresses “the judicial Power,” such conventions as judicial review and a process for appeals of court decisions have been worked out through specific legislation over time by Congress and by action of the courts themselves. The First Congress began this process with the Judiciary Act of 1789.

✒ The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of New York, 1790

Introduction

King George III issued The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (commonly referred to as the Proclamation of 1763) after Great Britain's victory in the French and Indian War. The proclamation outlawed settlement on Native American land west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation was issued from London, England (no American Indians were consulted in its creation) and colonists were angered by this proclamation from afar. They continued their westward expansion into these lands despite the proclamation’s terms.

Document A: The Proclamation of 1763 (excerpts)

Document B: The Treaty of New York, 1790 (excerpts)

✒ Thomas Jefferson on the Compromise of 1790

Introduction

In the fall of 1789, Congress directed Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to deliver a report on the new nation’s public finances and to propose a way of paying the debt to establish a solid footing for American credit. Hamilton’s report proposed for the federal government to assume all states’ debts and use federal tariffs (i.e., taxes on imports) and excise taxes to pay the debt gradually. Opposition to the plan was centered in the South, with members of Congress fearing Hamilton’s centralizing policies including taxes. Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia had already paid off most of their debts. They had little interest in now being on the hook for debts other states had failed to pay off. Meanwhile, representatives argued over placement of the permanent capital in different cities, including New York, Philadelphia, or Virginia. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson recounts that he helped engineer a compromise by bringing together Hamilton and Representative James Madison to hammer out a compromise over dinner. The result was that Hamilton’s financial plan passed Congress and a permanent capital was established at Washington, DC, in 1800 after a temporary residence in Philadelphia. Jefferson’s account of “The Compromise of 1790” is found in the introduction to the “Anas” from February 4, 1818. The “Anas” was a compilation of Jefferson’s writings. The origins of this publication are still unclear.

✒ Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, Writings on the National Bank, 1785–1792

Introduction

Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson frequently disagreed about matters relating to national policy. Washington looked to Hamilton’s economic initiatives for the funding of the national debt, the assumption of states’ debts, an excise tax, and the chartering of a national bank as the best course of action for the young nation’s financial and trade future. As secretary of state, Jefferson was tasked with giving firm direction to American foreign policy, though Hamilton frequently interjected his own views into foreign policy debates, a fact that did not endear him to Jefferson. It is important to remember that despite their differences, both men contributed greatly to Washington’s first cabinet and played a major role in directing the course of the young republic under the new Constitution.

Topic A: Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States

Topic B: Growth of Industry

Topic C: Foreign Affairs

✒ The Jay Treaty, 1795

Introduction

In 1794, Great Britain was at war with France. To fight this war, the British seized 250 American ships in the West Indies. American sailors were also “impressed,” or taken and pressed into service in the Royal Navy. Because of this violation of American neutral rights, President George Washington dispatched Chief Justice John Jay of the Supreme Court to Great Britain to negotiate a settlement. The two nations also had many unresolved issues from the Revolutionary War and 1783 Peace Treaty. Jay negotiated the best treaty he could considering the military weakness of the new nation. The British agreed to submit compensations related to seizures to arbitration, open the West Indies to small American vessels, open the British Isles to American trade on a most-favored-nation basis, and evacuate their forts in the American northwest. However, Jay failed to win concessions on impressment and seizures of American vessels, though the British separately revoked orders seizing American ships in the West Indies. The controversial treaty provoked fierce partisan opposition from the Jeffersonian-Republicans, in part because the Washington administration attempted to keep it secret, but the Senate ratified the treaty.

✒ Pinckney’s Treaty, 1796

Introduction

In 1763, Spain acquired the Louisiana Territory, including the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans. Spain also controlled East and West Florida. After the Revolutionary War, the Spanish closed American access to trade on the Mississippi River. The free navigation of the Mississippi River was a continuing source of contention between the new nation and Spain. President George Washington sent Thomas Pinckney as an envoy to Spain to resolve the dispute. Pinckney successfully negotiated a treaty for the free navigation of the Mississippi in late 1795 that the Senate ratified in 1796.

✒ George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Introduction

President George Washington delivered his Farewell Address at the end of his presidency, formally announcing that he would be retiring from the presidency. Washington had retired from power as the commander of the Continental Army and now wanted to set the precedent for a rotation in office for the presidency. The address was not verbally delivered to a live audience, but was published in the *Daily Advertiser,* a Philadelphia newspaper, on September 19, 1796 with the title “The Address of General Washington to the People of The United States on his Declining of the Presidency of the United States.” It is now known simply as Washington’s Farewell Address.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Property Protected—à la Françoise, 1798

Introduction

The French Revolution posed one of the first great foreign policy challenges for the United States. As John Adams’s administration began in 1797, the French were already at war with most European powers, including Great Britain. Anxious to follow Washington’s example and maintain neutrality, Adams dispatched a delegation to France to negotiate with the French government to stop the French seizure of U.S. merchant ships. This delegation was the subject of this 1798 satirical print entitled “Property protected--à la Françoise” (meaning “in or according to the French manner”) by British artist Charles Williams. In the print, America is represented as a woman wearing a feathered headdress. The two men wearing feathered hats and cloaks on either side of America represent the directors of the French government. The three figures surrounding the large, treasure-laden “National Sack” wear the tricolored cockade or badge of the French Revolution on their hats. The two standing Frenchmen each hold a sack labeled “Extorted from Portugal” (left) and “Borrow’d pr [per] Force from Switzerland.” Across the English Channel, John Bull laughs at the scene atop “Shakespeare’s Cliff.” Look carefully at the cartoon for several minutes before answering the questions that follow.

✒ Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, 1798–1799

Introduction

On February 21, 1797, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering informed Congress that France had seized more than three hundred U.S. merchant ships in the past eleven months. France and Great Britain were at war, but the United States remained neutral. Affronted by this attack on U.S. neutrality, President John Adams asked Congress for preparations for war, leading to an undeclared “quasi-war.” In 1798, the Federalists in Congress passed and Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act increased the amount of time it took to become a naturalized citizen and authorized the president to deport from the United States aliens deemed a threat to national security. The Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize the U.S. government, the president, or the Congress. The government eventually prosecuted about a dozen Jeffersonian-Republican newspaper editors under the Sedition Act. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led the opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts by writing resolutions adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures asserting the laws were unconstitutional.

Document A: The Virginia Resolutions

Document B: The Kentucky Resolution of 1798

Document C: The Kentucky Resolution of 1799

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Congressional Pugilists, 1798

Introduction

On March 2, 1797, the Directory of France, angered over the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, authorized French warships to seize neutral American vessels. President John Adams responded by calling for a naval buildup and the creation of a provisional army to mobilize the country for war. Congress agreed, and the undeclared Quasi-War with France had begun. Adams’s attempts at a peaceful solution resulted in the scandalous XYZ Affair. The ensuing foreign policy crisis created a highly partisan atmosphere between the Federalists and Jeffersonian-Republicans. The title of this 1798 cartoon refers to a fight in Congress between Vermont Representative Matthew Lyon, a Jeffersonian-Republican, and Roger Griswold of Connecticut, a Federalist, inside Congress Hall in Philadelphia (a pugilist is a boxer). The fight allegedly began when Griswold insulted Lyon. In this image, Griswold, armed with a cane, kicks Lyon, who grasps the former’s arm and raises a pair of fireplace tongs to strike him while other members of Congress look on. The image is dated February 15, 1798.

📝 The Global Impact of the American Revolution DBQ

I. Warm-up (5–15 min)

Ask students to consider the following questions with a partner, in a small group, or with a quick write-up:

II. Exploration (35-40 min)

Distribute Handout A and introduce the following DBQ activity. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Enlightenment or Age of Reason took hold in Western Europe. This intellectual movement asserted that human reason could solve problems, and it spawned new ideas concerning human nature and society, government, and politics. As these ideas spread through the increasingly literate populations of Europe and America, political unrest erupted into revolutions, beginning with the American Revolution in the 1770s. In this activity, students will examine documents from the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions to address the following prompt: **To what extent was there a connection between the American Revolution and revolutions in France, Haiti, and Latin America?**

III. Application (15-20 min)

After students have worked through the documents, lead a class discussion of the following questions:

IV. Conclusion (5–15 min)

Have each student write a thesis statement to address the DBQ prompt: **To what extent was there a connection between the American Revolution and revolutions in France, Haiti, and Latin America?** Evaluate student thesis statements using the AP DBQ Rubric.

📝 Actions of the First Congress

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min)

1. Ask students to consider a time when they had to work with a group in which they did not agree on something. How did they resolve their differences? Guide discussion toward the idea of compromise and the role of compromising in trying to move toward a goal.

II. Exploration (20 min)

1. Distribute **Handout A: Refining the Bill of Rights: Madison’s Proposals**, and have students move into thirteen small groups.

III. Application (30–40 min)

1. At this point, designate each of the groups to be the delegation from a specific state: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia. Point out that the sixty-five representatives were not equally apportioned among the states, but that more populous states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts had larger delegations, and Delaware and Rhode Island each had only one representative.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

1. Have students work with their small groups and pocket Constitutions to complete Column D and answer the analysis questions that follow. Lead a discussion on the analysis questions or collect them, as best suits your classroom.

📝 The National Bank Debate

I. Warm-up Activity (5–20 min)

1. Students will read **Handout A: Background of the National Bank Debate,** describing the historical context of the bank debate. Then, students should answer the warm-up question, “If you were President Washington, what kinds of evidence would you be looking for in the reports to be provided by your cabinet officers?”

II. Exploration (30 min)

1. Divide the class into working groups of four. Within each group, have students read and discuss **Handout B: Cabinet Member Reports** in its entirety, addressing both the Sourcing questions and the Review questions for each document. Clarify that their goal is to understand the pros and cons of all arguments, not to decide which approach they prefer. Do not assign specific identities to students in each group until after they have read and discussed Handout B in its entirety.

III. Application (15 min)

1. After groups have discussed the main ideas and addressed the sourcing questions and the review questions in each of the memos, tell students to number off 1**–**4 within their groups. Then, have students continue their discussion for another 10**–**15 minutes with a new identity. Each will present in his or her own words the constitutional arguments to Student 4, President Washington, as shown. During this stage of the lesson, Washington is allowed to ask clarifying questions but not to indicate which side he takes on the question of the constitutionality of the bank.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

1. Ask all the Washingtons to line up on the “Sign” and “Veto” sides of the room. Ask each to explain why they signed or vetoed the bill.

📝 Methods of Slave Resistance DBQ

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min)

Lead students in a brief discussion or quick written response to the following prompt: How do you react when you are put in a situation you find unfair, unjust, and/or morally wrong? What are your options? How can you respond? Guide students to think about the ways in which someone can “fight back” and address a wrong (e.g., due process, seek out like-minded individuals and work for change, use force or violence, run away, create coping mechanisms). Transition the conversation to the topic of slavery. The key point about slavery is that it was a power relationship in which enslaved individuals did not have power, and this was enforced by law and by violence. Students might find a grade or curfew unfair, but in comparison to having no power over your person, this is trivial. Remind students that as early as 1688 and throughout the Founding era, groups publicly condemned the institution of slavery (see the Germantown Friends’ Antislavery Petition, 1688 Primary Source in Chapter 2). Enslaved individuals also spoke or acted out in various ways to affirm their own humanity and call attention to the brutality of the institution of slavery. In this activity, students will consider those responses.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Distribute the document packet for the lesson. Have students work individually, with a partner, or in small groups to read each source in sequence and answer the accompanying questions.

III. Application (10–25 min)

After students have worked through the documents, invite them to come back together to synthesize the content by leading a class discussion on the following reflective questions. Students may respond orally to each question or write their responses to each question, as best fits your classroom.

Have each student write a thesis statement to the DBQ prompt: Analyze the methods of resistance used by enslaved Africans in the United States c. 1780–1865.

📝 George Washington in American Art

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min, depending on student responses)

Invite students to share with a partner a picture they have taken recently on their phone. Have the partner interpret the picture by asking them what they see and what they think. Ask students to consider what the picture reveals about the subject and the audience.

II. Exploration (25–30 min)

III. Application (10–20 min)

Invite students to come back together after looking at the images of Washington to synthesize the content by leading a class discussion of the following questions. Students may orally respond to each question or write their responses, as best fits your needs.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5 min)

Have students write a comparative and/or CCOT thesis statement based on the art in this exercise:

📝 Unit 2 Civics Connection: An Apple of Gold in a Frame of Silver

I. Warm-up Activity (5–10 min)

Ask students to turn to one another in small groups and list some examples of individual property. After giving students a few minutes to discuss the question, call for their responses and write on the board a few examples that they mention. They may think first of physical things like clothes, phone, car, house, and land. Ask students to identify which of the items in their list are physical belongings. If they have listed types of property that are not physical belongings, have them also identify those. If their initial list is only physical belongings, directly ask them to think of some things that belong to individuals but are not tangibles, and to individually jot those down on their own paper. Meanwhile, draw a large circle on the board ([link]) and label the circle “Property.” Divide the circle in half and label one half “Physical Property: My Stuff,” listing a few examples of tangible property that students already listed in that half. Then ask students to give you some examples to list in the other half.

II. Exploration (20-30 min)

Distribute **Handout A: An Apple of Gold in a Frame of Silver Student Packet**

III. Application (10–25 min)

Depending on the method you used to have students do the initial reading and analysis, conduct a discussion that allows students to consider all the documents and share their responses to the questions in the packet. They may share their responses as a whole class, in the second stage of jigsaw groups, through inner/outer circle fishbowl discussion, and so forth.

Conclude by having students write an individual response to the guiding question and collect their responses. **Guiding Question: Explain the relationship between the apple of gold and the frame of silver. What is the significance of the principles outlined in each Founding document?**

📝 George Washington's Views on Slavery

📝 The Founders' Failure to End Slavery

📝 Using Political Cartoons to Understand History

📝 Be Washington: Whiskey Rebellion

✏ Unit 2 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1800–1844

1800–1828

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 5 Introductory Essay: 1800–1828

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which the republic developed from 1800 to 1848

Introduction

In 1800, the Federalist Party controlled both houses of Congress, John Adams was president, the Sedition Act was still in place, and the nation was reeling from the crises sparked by the Quasi-War with France. By the end of 1828, the Federalist Party was extinct and the Jeffersonian Republicans had completely triumphed, though often through Hamiltonian policies. The nation was in the midst of a period of tremendous growth in nearly all realms, particularly economic and territorial. Andrew Jackson ([link]**a**) had defeated John Adams’s son, incumbent John Quincy Adams ([link]**b**), to win the presidency. Jacksonianism signaled the expansion of suffrage to all white men and their widespread, democratic political participation in an exceptional manner, though women and African Americans were not included. A new post-Revolutionary generation built the new nation as farmers and merchants, as well as national leaders.

Jeffersonian America

Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency was secured narrowly, and only after thirty-six contentious ballots in the House of Representatives, which had to break an electoral-vote tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr (see the Was the Election of 1800 a Revolution? Point-Counterpoint). The Jeffersonian Republicans also took control of the House and Senate as well as many state legislatures. Jefferson’s unique leadership style was nimble, and it proved to be popular. His relaxed personality and good manners made him an exceptional host who often disarmed guests at his dinners and social gatherings. He thought the Federalists had created a presidency full of monarchical trappings, and he made the office appear more democratic.

The War of 1812

The wily Napoleon deceived Madison by announcing he was repealing his trade decrees, prompting the Americans to renounce trade with the British. But the French did no such thing; they continued to seize ships—more than the British did between 1807 and 1812 ([link]). Despite this betrayal by the French, tensions between the Americans and British ratcheted upward. Some Americans welcomed another war with the British, seeing a military conflict as a way of reasserting national pride, and “War Hawks” in Congress such as Kentucky’s Henry Clay argued that honor demanded a fight. Besides national honor, these southern and western members of Congress also wanted to invade Canada to expel the British and expand the frontier as a way to expel the Native Americans. Madison did not seek war but found himself under increasing pressure to ask Congress for a declaration. Despite strong opposition from Federalists and a significant number of Republicans, Congress voted to declare war on Britain on June 18, 1812, and what some Americans came to think of as a second war for independence was soon underway.

Market Revolution and Transportation Revolution

Even as the War of 1812 was ending, the United States was already being reshaped by three major transformations. The Market Revolution and the Transportation Revolution changed the way Americans worked and lived, and each helped create a new Market Revolution that, in turn, transformed the way the nation bought and sold goods, manufactured items for consumption at home and abroad, and engaged in trade across the Atlantic world.

Government and the Market Revolution

After the War of 1812, some politicians supported nationally funded internal improvements, a national bank, and a protective tariff under a philosophy known as economic nationalism. The charter for the original Bank of the United States expired in 1811 and was not renewed, producing economic chaos during the war. President Madison, long an opponent of Hamilton’s national bank on constitutional grounds, supported the bank’s recharter in 1811, but the Republican Congress defeated it. In 1816, the Republican Congress relented and rechartered the bank for twenty years.

Expansion, Population of the West, and Slavery

As the nation and the national economy moved west, so too did the institution of slavery. President Thomas Jefferson had signed the bill outlawing the importation of enslaved persons in 1808, but slavery did not die of its own volition, as the founders hoped. Thanks to the technological breakthrough of the cotton gin and to the increasing demand for cotton, slavery’s hold on the American economy strengthened. White farmers surged westward into the new states of Alabama and Mississippi and states created from the Louisiana Territory, bringing their slaves with them to raise cotton. In short, slavery became even more deeply entrenched in the United States from 1800 to 1828 ([link]). (See the Changing Views of Slavery Mini-DBQ Lesson.)

National Politics

In 1819–1820, a pair of crises stunned the nation, threatened union and harmony, and dramatically ended the Era of Good Feelings. First, the collapse of cotton prices in the London market triggered the start of the Panic of 1819, a wide-ranging economic depression that revealed the fragile nature of the postwar boom. The price of U.S. cotton fell from 32.5 cents per pound in 1818 to 14.3 cents per pound a year later, sending the vast U.S. cotton market reeling. A speculative bubble in land and other commodities had also grown in the United States, fueled by an expansion of credit by state banks. Those banks made reckless loans and issued banknotes beyond their ability to redeem them. Even the new Second Bank of the United States, which was supposed to inject order and reason into banking, got caught in the speculative mania and became overextended as well. The credit contraction extended throughout the nation and plunged the country into an economic depression. The shock of hard times led to a lingering mistrust and resentment of banks and the financial elite, especially in the South and West.

Conclusion

From 1800 to 1828, the young nation experienced rapid economic growth and geographical expansion westward. For a time, the spirit of harmony, union, and patriotism that existed after the War of 1812 in The Era of Good Feelings was real and significant. But continuing tensions within American society eventually overtook those sentiments. Conflicts over slavery and sectionalism, the economy and markets, and politics and ideology divided the country during the Antebellum Era. The roots of these divisions were formed in the 1800–1828 era, marking it as a time of stupendous growth that nonetheless masked latent tensions and animosities that ultimately foreclosed all compromises.

🔎 The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of policy debates in the early republic

🔎 Fort McHenry and the War of 1812

🔎 Old Hickory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans

🔎 Tecumseh and the Prophet

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government from 1800 to 1848

🔎 The Corrupt Bargain

🔎 Mountain Men

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why innovation in technology, agriculture, and commerce affected various segments of American society over time

🔎 The Building of the Erie Canal

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce over time

🔎 Washington Irving

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why a new national culture developed from 1800 to 1848

📍<i> Marbury v. Madison</i>

📍 The Hartford Convention

📍 The Missouri Compromise

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how different regional interests affected debates about the role of the federal government in the early republic

💬 Was the Election of 1800 a Revolution?

Issue on the Table

Did Thomas Jefferson’s victory in the presidential election of 1800 fundamentally transform American politics or did it merely indicate a transfer of power to an opposition party?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Over a decade after retiring from the presidency, Thomas Jefferson described his own election as the “revolution of 1800.” This revolution, he wrote, was “as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.” Jefferson immediately brought about changes in the presidency and the government. He cut the military and reduced spending, cut the federal debt, and rolled back some of the formalities of the office, for example, by having diplomats choose their own seats at formal state functions. He believed he ended the centralization policies of the Federalists that were pushing the nation toward monarchy and despotism.

Claim B

The victory of Thomas Jefferson resulted in a transfer of power to an opposition party, but it did not transform American politics. Although there was much that was revolutionary and certainly significant about Jefferson’s victory in 1800, it did not produce an immediate or dramatic change in political culture, for two main reasons. First, Jefferson owed his election to several quirky flukes in an arcane electoral system that still involved very few people and was controlled by elites. Second, although, once in power, Jefferson nudged the nation’s political culture in a different direction, his actions and policies continued many key Federalist initiatives and, as such, were much more evolutionary than revolutionary.

💬 Did the Missouri Compromise Merely Delay War?

Issue on the Table

Was the Missouri Compromise a prudential move of political statesmanship and compromise that achieved much, given the political realities of the time, or did it merely delay a conflict that could only be solved by war?

Instructions

Claim A

During the pre–Civil War era, numerous political compromises mitigated the conflict over slavery and preserved the fragile union between North and South. There is no better example than the Missouri Compromise of 1820. At that time, most national politicians recognized the art of agreement by mutual concession as necessary, not only for union but also in the regular practice of republican governance.

Claim B

On February 15, 1819, James Tallmadge stood in the well of the House of Representatives and delivered a rousing speech in favor of two amendments to the Missouri admission bill that, if accepted, would have gradually abolished slavery in Missouri, prohibiting the growth of what Southerners called “the peculiar institution.” Tallmadge’s restrictions passed the House with a sectional majority but were blocked in the Senate, necessitating an eventual compromise. Thomas Jefferson believed the ensuing debate, on the question of slavery and its expansion, foretold the end of the Union, because it was a seminal and grim moment that portended sectional division and conflict. And of course, Jefferson was right. The debate that Tallmadge triggered eventually produced a fratricidal civil war.

✒ The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1805

Introduction

After the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery, a unit of the U.S. Army. Led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his friend and fellow soldier, William Clark, the Corps of Discovery departed from St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1804. Lewis, Clark, and other members of the expedition party were eager to explore lands in the newly acquired territory west of the Mississippi River, establish trade relations with local Native American tribes, and document the flora and fauna of the American West. Throughout the course of their two-year journey, Lewis and Clark took detailed notes in a series of journals, which they presented to Jefferson at the conclusion of their expedition and ultimately had published for the general public. The highlighted document is an entry from those journals, in which Clark describes the moment the Corps of Discovery finally glimpsed the Pacific Ocean. In the entry, Clark also provides a detailed description of the party’s interaction with the Wahkiakum people, who resided near what is today the Washington coast.

✒ The Monroe Doctrine, 1823

Introduction

In the 1790s, the Washington and Adams administrations pursued a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. Neutrality not only was a guiding principle in the early republic but a necessity: The United States did not maintain an army or navy strong enough to realistically repel foreign attacks. In the early 1800s, the Napoleonic Wars in Europe consumed the attention of most of the great powers for more than a decade. As a result, Spain had difficulty retaining control over its imperial possessions in North and South America. Over the first several decades of the nineteenth century, the people in several countries revolted against Spanish rule and gained independence. In theory, the U.S. government supported those revolutions because it believed independence would allow the United States, rather than Europe, to expand both its territory and its influence in the western hemisphere. In 1823, President James Monroe, fearing Russian designs on the Northwest and European designs on the new republics of Latin America, issued what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers from intervening in the affairs of the western hemisphere in order to prevent threats to American trade and national security.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: The Presidential Election of 1824

Introduction

Four candidates vied for the presidency in 1824: Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford of Georgia, Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky, U.S. senator and former U.S. Army general Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts. Although all four men ran as National Republicans, they each represented different regional interests. No candidate secured the 131 electoral votes needed to win the election, though Jackson received the largest share of the popular vote. With no winner in the Electoral College, the election was thrown to the House of Representatives. The House elected John Quincy Adams, a result denounced by Jackson supporters as a “corrupt bargain” and which has led some historians to label the election of 1824 as one of the most contentious and controversial elections in U.S. history.

✒ Henry Clay, Speech on American Industry, 1824

Introduction

After the War of 1812, the United States began growing geographically and economically. Foreign competition, economic nationalism, and the need for stronger national security led to proposals for a protective tariff to shield American manufacturing from foreign—especially British—competition. The debate over tariffs exposed growing sectional divides in the new republic. In general, southern planters resented tariffs, whereas northern manufacturers benefited from them. Tariffs artificially raised the price of imported goods, allowing northern merchants to set higher prices for their goods.

📝 John Marshall’s Landmark Cases DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

Instruct students to analyze the constitutional provisions on the handout and work with a partner or two to write each one in their own words.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Have students work individually or in groups as best suits your teaching situation to read the following documents and answer the comprehension and sourcing questions as they go along.

III. Application (15–20 min)

Redirect students to the prompt: **Evaluate the contributions to the power of the federal government by John Marshall as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court**.

IV. Conclusion (5 min)

Solicit volunteers to share their thesis and workshop several using the following questions:

📝 Changing Views of Slavery Mini-DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Students will read the excerpt from the opening of the *Declaration of Independence* and answer the accompanying questions. After discussing the first three questions, read the following paragraph out loud with students for emphasis (on student handout):

II. Exploration (30 min)

Have students read and answer questions for the remaining primary source documents. Students may complete this individually or in pairs as best fits your classroom. In this stage, the teacher should move about the classroom to confirm students are analyzing the documents correctly. This observation and questioning will serve as formative assessments for the lesson.

III. Application (10–15 min)

After students have worked through the documents, invite students to come back together to synthesize the content by leading a class discussion on the following questions. Students may respond orally to each question or write their responses to each question, as best fits your classroom.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10–15 min)

Have each student write a thesis statement to the prompt: Explain how attitudes toward African slavery changed from the Founding Era (c. 1780) to the mid-nineteenth century (c. 1840). You may solicit volunteers to share their thesis and workshop several using the following questions, or have students share with a partner and provide feedback on the following questions:

✏ Unit 3 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1828–1844

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 6 Introductory Essay: 1828–1844

Introduction

In 1831, the twenty-five–year-old French noble Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States and Canada with a friend during a ten-month tour at the behest of the French monarchical government. Their official task was to examine and report on the American prison system. Tocqueville accomplished his task but also published a seminal work on the democratic political institutions and character of American society called *Democracy in America*. Although he warned of the dangers of the tyranny of the majority if it did not respect minority rights, Tocqueville was especially impressed by the local self-rule, voluntary associations, and churches he found that created a healthy American civil society. Tocqueville visited the United States during a time in which democracy was increasing, especially for white men, and when reformers—male, female, black, and white—were inspired to improve society with several moral reforms (see the Alexis de Tocqueville, *Democracy in America*, 1835 Primary Source).

The Presidential Election of 1828

The presidential election of 1828 marked a high point in the transition to a new, more democratic era in American politics. Leading roles were played by many of the same characters already on the national stage. President John Quincy Adams, supported by his Secretary of State Henry Clay, ran against war hero and former senator Andrew Jackson, supported by Senator Martin Van Buren of New York and Vice President John C. Calhoun. The political rivals struggled for power during a time of expanding democracy. In 1828, the choice of victor would rest in the hands of the full population of adult white men in every state, except South Carolina and Virginia, thanks to the broad abolition of property restrictions on voting rights.

American Indians and the Weight of Presidential Power

The Jacksonians had not won on image alone. Policy figured prominently in the 1828 election, far more than at any time since the War of 1812. Jackson promised to bring stability to the nation’s volatile economy. He also helped introduce the spoils system, which increased his ability to implement the program of what came to be called the Democratic Party, as he dismissed office holders from the previous government wholesale and placed party loyalists in office. Jackson’s administration also operated with an authority previously absent from government, firmly exercising federal and executive power, at times in outright conflict with the hallowed traditions of states’ rights he otherwise embraced.

Tariffs and the National Bank

President Jackson continued to expand federal and executive power in a crisis precipitated when he and many northern members of Congress sought to regulate overseas trade and protect U.S. industry. In 1828, Henry Clay assumed responsibility for guiding through Congress a protectionist tariff, the so-called Tariff of Abominations, with the support of President John Quincy Adams, until Martin Van Buren took charge and sought to use the tariff bill to appeal to mid-Atlantic Jacksonian voters. The tariff was supposedly designed to counteract British economic dominance by placing high tariffs on imports from that country as a means to protect (mostly northern) manufactured goods from foreign competition. Many southern leaders, however, suspected the measure was a clever attempt to harm the South and undermine the institution of slavery. Vice President Calhoun argued the tariff would provoke retaliatory British tariffs on American cotton imports from the South, which fed the British mills in Lancashire. Calhoun had reversed his earlier support of tariffs as a device for integrating a national, self-sufficient economy, instead adopting what was politically expedient to win with Jackson. Because the U.S. cotton industry and the system of slavery were mutually dependent, the results of the tariff could be disastrous for southern planters.

Van Buren and the Panic of 1837

A talented politician once known as the “Little Magician,” Martin Van Buren was given little chance to establish a successful presidency. Shortly after he entered office, the national economy staggered under the so-called Panic of 1837. This catastrophe originated in the collapse of a land bubble and the subsequent failure of many of the banks to which Jackson had transferred funds once destined for the Bank of the United States. In response, Van Buren established an independent treasury and cut government expenditures, but to little avail—the economy entered a deep recession. This setback, combined with an ongoing and expensive military campaign to force the Seminole Indians out of Florida and condemnations of Van Buren’s allegedly extravagant White House lifestyle, doomed his chances for reelection in 1840.

Manifest Destiny: Westward Expansion

Americans’ rapid westward migration was changing the very nature of the United States. Building on the migration that had begun in earnest after the War of 1812, the Indian removals of the 1830s had cleared the way for further westward expansion in the South, while the former Louisiana Purchase territories were rapidly swallowed up by homesteaders. The term “Manifest Destiny,” which entered the language in the mid-1840s, suggested the United States had a divinely appointed mission to expand westward to the shores of the Pacific Ocean against any opposition. But this idea of destiny fueled another, divisive debate: as the country expanded, would slavery too?

Social and Religious Movements in the Second Great Awakening

Even as the United States expanded outward, and inwardly debated the moral implications of the growing system of slavery, many of its people experienced a religious revival in what has come to be called the Second Great Awakening. Whereas eighteenth-century Calvinists had emphasized the inability of humans to overcome sin on their own accounts, a new order of preachers now argued the opposite, claiming that people could reject and overcome sin through direct action (see the Jedediah Burchard, Revivalist Sermon, 1835 Primary Source).

Growing Resistance to Slavery

The most extreme examples of resistance to slavery occurred among African Americans. In 1829, free black David Walker published his *Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World*, a radical pamphlet warning whites that blacks would revolt if the enslaved were not freed (see the David Walker, “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” 1829 Primary Source). He wrote, “your DESTRUCTION is at hand, and will be speedily consummated unless you REPENT.” On August 22 and 23, 1831, Nat Turner’s Rebellion erupted in southeastern Virginia. Nat Turner was guided by his interpretation of biblical and religious ideals. He believed he had a divine mission of exacting vengeance against slaveholders and ushering in a new age of liberty. About sixty enslaved and free blacks in Southampton County traveled through several plantations and murdered and decapitated almost sixty white inhabitants, including forty-six women and children. White mobs and militia troops retaliated by massacring more than one hundred enslaved and free blacks, some of whom did not even participate in the rebellion. Turner eluded capture for several weeks until he was caught, tried, and hanged. The episode triggered an internal debate over slavery and emancipation in Virginia but mostly resulted in increases in slave patrols, tighter controls over the movement and meetings of enslaved persons, and restrictions on free blacks (see the Nat Turner’s Rebellion Narrative).

Social Reforms and Suffrage

Antebellum reformers also targeted the inhumane conditions in prisons and asylums, institutions that focused on incarceration and punishment rather than rehabilitation. Horrified reformers such as Samuel Gridley Howe and Dorothea Dix campaigned for changes, including opportunities for education, recreation, and religious instruction for inmates. Through their efforts, especially in New England, several model prisons and asylums were constructed (see the Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislation of Massachusetts, 1843 Primary Source).

🔎 The Nullification Crisis

🔎 The Mormon Trail

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various reform movements developed and expanded from 1800 to 1848

🔎 The Trail of Tears

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why American foreign policy developed and expanded over time

🔎 William Lloyd Garrison’s War against Slavery

🔎 Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the continuities and changes in the experience of African Americans from 1800 to 1848

🔎 Sam Houston and Texas Independence

🔎 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Struggle for Women’s Suffrage

🔎 The Lowell Girls

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce over time
* Explain how and why innovation in technology, agriculture, and commerce affected various segments of American society over time

🔎 John Quincy Adams and the <i> Amistad</i>

🔎 Frederick Douglass’s Path to Freedom

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various reform movements developed and expanded from 1800 to 1848
* Explain the continuities and changes in the experience of African Americans from 1800 to 1848

📍 John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule

📍 Andrew Jackson’s Veto of the National Bank

💬 Is the Concurrent Majority Theory Faithful to the Ideals of the Constitution?

Issue on the Table

Was John C. Calhoun’s concurrent majority theory rooted in the political theory of the Founding or did it diverge from it?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

In the mid-nineteenth century, the most ardent defender of states’ rights in the United States, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, became the principal advocate of the political theory of “concurrent majorities,” which argued that there was not just majority rule in Congress but in the power of the states as well. The concurrent majority theory was a framework for limiting the power of the federal government, blocking the centralization of authority, and controlling numerical majority rule in a democratic republic, especially over sectional controversies related to slavery. Calhoun considered numerical majority rule to be a form of tyranny.

Claim B

The political theory of John C. Calhoun, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, included three important elements. The first was a critique of majority rule, which he believed inevitably tended toward majority tyranny. The second was a proposed remedy: Calhoun’s concurrent majority theory, whereby each important interest group enjoyed veto rights over political decisions. For example, the states enjoyed veto rights over those of majorities in the national government. The third element of Calhoun’s theory, which became increasingly prominent from the 1830s until his death in 1850, was a defense of slavery, not merely as a difficult-to-remove evil, but as a positive good essential to republican government.

✒ John C. Calhoun, <i>South Carolina Exposition and Protest</i>, 1828

Introduction

John C. Calhoun influenced national policy in numerous elected and appointed positions for forty years. A skilled and brilliant orator, Calhoun initially was known as a fervent nationalist. During his first term as vice president in 1824, Calhoun became disillusioned with President John Quincy Adams’s policies matters such as high tariffs and internal improvements. Calhoun saw Adams’s policies as enhancing the scope of the national government at the expense of the interests of states, such as his native South Carolina. In 1828, Congress enacted and Adams signed the protectionist Tariff of 1828, known in the South as the “Tariff of Abominations.” The tariff benefited manufacturing and commercial interests in the northern states because the new high taxes increased the price of foreign-made goods. Southerners feared it would harm foreign manufacturers, resulting in a trade war that would damage the agricultural South, which depended on exporting its raw materials. In response, Calhoun anonymously authored the *South Carolina Exposition and Protest*, a lengthy document in which he argued for what he believed would restore the powers of the states to their proper dignity in the Constitution’s design of federalism. Thousands of copies of the pamphlet were printed and distributed across the state, and Calhoun submitted his reasoning to a committee of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

✒ David Walker, “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” 1829

Introduction

The son of an enslaved father and a free mother, David Walker published his controversial pamphlet, *Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World*, in 1829. Although he was never enslaved, Walker witnessed the evils of slavery and racism during his childhood in North Carolina. After moving to Boston and setting up a clothing store, Walker found himself in the company of activists who shared his desire to end slavery. Before writing the pamphlet, Walker contributed regularly to *Freedom’s Journal*, the first African American newspaper published in the United States. Unlike gradual emancipationists, who believed the institution of slavery should gradually be phased out, Walker urged enslaved workers to rebel against their masters to bring about an immediate abolition of slavery. Once copies of his pamphlet made their way to the South and into the hands of enslaved workers and slaveholders, white southerners grew increasingly alarmed because they feared a rebellion was imminent.

✒ Webster-Hayne Debates, 1830

Introduction

Robert Young Hayne spent more than two decades in elected offices, including mayor of Charleston, member of South Carolina’s legislature, attorney general, and then governor of the state. He served as a U.S. senator from 1823 to 1832, and was a leading proponent of the states’ rights doctrine. He favored the free-trade, low-tariff policies that benefited agricultural states and maintained that slavery was entirely an internal matter to be legislated within each state. Daniel Webster served as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1827 to 1841, and again from 1845 to 1850. In his three decades of public service as congressman, senator, and secretary of state, he represented the interests of New England’s growing manufacturing sector by supporting high tariffs and a powerful national government.

✒ Indian Removal Act, 1830, and Cherokee Chief John Ross’s Memorial and Protest to Congress, 1836

Introduction

Westward expansion, and the ensuing conflict with American Indians who called these lands home, was a recurrent theme in colonial and early American history. In the early part of the 1800s, American settlers began pressuring the federal government to remove American Indians occupying the lands the settlers desired. Through military campaigns and treaties, the U.S. government slowly and sporadically began to transfer American Indians from their lands to areas west of the Mississippi River. However, by the time Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828, thousands of American Indians still lived east of the Mississippi River. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes (collectively known as the Five Civilized Tribes) made up most of this remaining population. Part of their success in keeping their lands was due to their adoption of some American cultural and political values. Despite their attempts at assimilation, the Five Civilized Tribes ultimately suffered the same fate as other Indian tribes.

✒ Andrew Jackson, Bank Veto Message, 1832

Introduction

A national bank had been one of the cornerstones of Alexander Hamilton’s economic reforms as secretary of the treasury during the Washington administration. The Bank of the United States could loan money to the federal government in times of war and encourage economic development by providing people access to capital. The Second Bank of the United States was signed into law by President James Madison in 1816 and was even larger than the first. By law, the bank was the only place that the federal government could deposit its own funds, and it also did a tremendous business in general banking. The bank’s opponents described the institution as a “many headed monster” and argued that the bank was actively creating an aristocracy that undermined the interests of the common man. State banks and advocates of “soft money”—those who wanted more currency in circulation—disliked the Second Bank of the United States because it restrained state banks from issuing currency notes more freely. Jackson’s opposition to aristocratic privilege and concentrating economic power in the federal government made him an enemy of the bank as well. The bank was rechartered by Congress in 1832, but Jackson vetoed the bill. In his veto message, President Andrew Jackson explained reasons for doing so.

✒ Alexis de Tocqueville, <i>Democracy in America</i>, 1835

Introduction

In 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were both low-ranking members of the Versailles court of law who believed the era of monarchy and aristocracy was coming to an end. They decided to make a lengthy visit to the United States, where their official objective would be study of the U.S. prison system to enlighten reform of French prisons. However, their larger goal was to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the political culture in the United States with an eye to influencing postrevolutionary France. In 1831, they embarked on their nine-month, seven-thousand–mile tour of the United States east of the Mississippi, during which they studied not just the prisons but everything else about life in America. Both men ultimately wrote successful books about their time in the United States, but it was Tocqueville’s *Democracy in America* that became one of the most significant political texts ever written about the United States. Tocqueville wrote an enduring analysis allowing Americans to better understand themselves.

✒ Jedediah Burchard, Revivalist Sermon, 1835

Introduction

During the early nineteenth century, a new religious revival movement known as the Second Great Awakening spread across the United States. While the dominant sects of Protestant Christianity emphasized a scholarly study of the Bible and a stoic relationship with God, revivalist preachers attempted to infuse congregations with emotion to bring them closer to Jesus. These preachers, who were generally Methodist, Baptist, or Presbyterian, rejected the established church structures of their time and instead traveled across the United States to spread their message at “camp meetings” to reach as many souls as they could. These services were generally held outdoors and featured an emphasis on emotion, individual piety, and the ability to improve oneself spiritually.

✒ Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, 1837

Introduction

The women’s rights movement grew significantly over the course of the nineteenth century as women fought to secure an equal place in society alongside men. Sarah Grimké was born on a South Carolina plantation in 1792 but grew to despise slavery. Sarah and her sister, Angelina, became the first prominent female voices in favor of abolitionism and traveled throughout the country giving speeches and lectures against slavery. Male abolitionists immediately condemned Sarah and Angelina for stepping outside of a traditional domestic role, leading the sisters to also begin to fight for a political voice for women. Sarah wrote multiple letters to Mary Parker, the president of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, in 1837. In the following letter, she discussed the legal inequalities that women faced in American society.

✒ Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837

Introduction

On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a speech to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. At that time, Emerson had already established himself as a respected writer and one of the foremost proponents of the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement that began in the late 1820s and grew in popularity throughout the 1830s. Transcendentalism held that human beings are innately good and possess a capability to make sense of the world around them by relying on subjective intuition—an acquisition of knowledge based on personal experiences. Immersion in and respect for the natural environment was of tremendous importance to transcendentalists. In his speech, which he ultimately had transcribed into a widely read essay, Emerson encouraged his audience to develop an appreciation of nature. Because the United States was still a new nation whose scholars often turned to European academic texts for guidance, Emerson also urged the students and faculty to use their subjective intuition to produce scholarship and works of literature that would allow America to be recognized by an international audience.

✒ John C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” 1837

Introduction

As abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison grew louder in their attacks on slavery and southern culture, several white southerners produced a new defense of slavery. This defense was not only a response to the growing abolitionist movement but also to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (which terrified southern whites) and the expansion of the lucrative cotton economy into the Deep South. In this speech, John C. Calhoun, then a U.S. senator, vigorously defended the institution of slavery and stated the essence of this new intellectual defense of the institution: Southerners must stop apologizing for slavery and reject the idea that it was a necessary evil. Instead, Calhoun insisted, slavery was a “positive good.” He went further, making legal arguments about the Constitution protecting states’ rights to preserve slavery. Calhoun then offered a moral defense of slavery by claiming it to be a more humane method of organizing labor than the conditions wage laborers faced in industrial cities in Europe and the northern United States.

✒ Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislation of Massachusetts, 1843

Introduction

In the first half of the nineteenth century, those who suffered from mental illness were often housed in jails or almshouses in deplorable conditions with harsh treatment. Dorothea Dix sought to bring attention to the poor treatment of the mentally ill and demand reform. As a young woman, Dix spent time in Europe, where she encountered individuals working to change the way the mentally ill were cared for. After returning home to the United States, Dix traveled through multiple states to document the abysmal state in which the mentally ill were frequently housed and treated. In 1840–1841, she visited several such places in the commonwealth of Massachusetts and later presented this petition, or memorial, to the state legislature to request legislation regulating standards of care. Dix continued to work for reforms for the rest of her life, visiting other countries to document the conditions of hospitals and serving as the superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War.

✒ Frederick Douglass, <i>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass</i>, 1845

Introduction

Born enslaved on a Maryland plantation, Frederick Douglass experienced the evils of slavery firsthand. He secretly taught himself to read and later escaped to New York and then Massachusetts. Douglass eluded slave catchers by changing his last name and working as a laborer for several years. In 1841, Douglass was invited to describe his experiences under slavery at an antislavery convention in Nantucket. Douglass’s skill as an orator and the poignancy of his description propelled him into a new career as an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His fame grew thanks to his skill not only as a speaker but as a writer. In his autobiography, published in 1845, Douglass presented a graphic and personal description of life in slavery. His work served the cause of abolition by humanizing the experience of slavery in a way that could easily be understood by those far removed by the experience of plantation life. After publishing his work, Douglass left on a two-year speaking tour to avoid capture by his former owner, whom he had named in his narrative. While on tour, Douglass also raised funds to purchase his freedom because, as a runaway slave, he was considered by law the property of his owner. Over the course of his life, Douglass continued to work for the abolitionist cause, served as consultant to President Lincoln during the Civil War, and championed the rights of former slaves during Reconstruction. He died in 1895 at his home in Washington, DC.

✒ Art Analysis: <i>The County Election</i> by George Caleb Bingham, 1852

Introduction

Beginning in the late 1840s, Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham created a series of paintings illustrating American democracy. Bingham belonged to the Whig party and, in addition to being an artist, held numerous offices and political appointments throughout the middle of the nineteenth century. The scene in *The County Election* ([link]) depicts a group of men coming together to cast their votes on Election Day in Saline County, Missouri, in 1850. The artist himself ran for office in this election and lost. He painted himself sitting at the bottom of the stairs, looking down at what may be a ballot. His opponent, who ultimately was the winning candidate, is tipping his top hat near the top of the stairs of the building in the foreground; the banner on the wall behind him reads: “The will of the people the supreme law.” The hotel sign in the background reads “Union Hotel.” Look carefully at the painting for several minutes before answering the questions that follow.

📝 Responses to the Cherokee Removal Mini DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

Students will read the preamble of the Declaration of Independence and answer the questions in the handout. After that, they will brainstorm a list of examples of what would be protected by the natural rights they identify in the document. The student pairs will then choose the five natural rights they think are most important and write each on an individual sticky note and post in the room. The teacher should have a designated place in the room (ideally on a separate wall) for “equality,” “life,” “liberty,” and the “pursuit of happiness.” After the allotted time is complete, the students should be allowed to move about the room and read the examples their classmates have posted.

II. Exploration (40 min)

The teacher will then announce the class will examine the policy of American Indian removal under President Andrew Jackson. As the students read the documents, the focus should be how this policy fit into the Founding principles of natural rights. Students will read documents 2–5, and answer the analysis questions for each of them.

III. Application (30 min)

Students will write a persuasive essay, expressing agreement or disagreement with the following prompt: “The policy of American Indian removal was consistent with the principles and values of the founding of the United States.” All assertions in the essay must be supported by evidence quoted from the assigned documents. The essay must include citations from at least three of the assigned documents.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Student will conduct a peer review of the reflection essay written by the partner they worked with on this assignment. They will evaluate whether the essay accomplished the following:

📝 American Indians in American Art

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min, depending on student responses)

II. Exploration (25–30 min)

III. Application (10–20 min)

Invite students to come back together after looking at the images of American Indians to synthesize the content by leading a class discussion of the following questions. Students may orally respond to each question or write their responses, as best fits your needs.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5 min)

Have students write a short answer response to the following prompt:

📝 The Women’s Movement and the Seneca Falls Convention

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

Project the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence on the board or read aloud to students, as best fits your classroom.

II. Exploration (20 min)

Students will need highlighters or colored pencils.

III. Application (20 min)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5-10 min or longer, depending on response chosen by teacher)

Have students write a comparative thesis statement addressing the following prompt: Compare the major ideas set forth in the Declaration of Independence (1776) with the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848).

📝 Unit 3 Civics Connection: Liberty and Union

I. Warm-Up Activity (5-10 min)

Before class, draw on the board the spectrum shown:

II. Exploration (Day 1)

III. Application (Day 2)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Conclude by having students write an individual response to the guiding question and collect their responses. **Civics Connection Unit 3 Guiding Question: How did the expansion of the country and slavery lead to a sectional debate about the nature of the Union and the doctrine of nullification? Why is it significant to understand the nature of the Union?** You might instruct students to write only a thesis statement and outline, or write a full essay, as best suits your schedule and classroom needs.

✏ Unit 3 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1844–1877

1844–1860

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 7 Introductory Essay: 1844–1860

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which sectional conflict emerged from 1844 to 1877

Introduction

The antebellum period before the Civil War witnessed rapid population and economic growth and several reform movements aimed at improving lives and fulfilling the principles of the American republic. The United States also experienced contention and deep divisions as slavery and the expansion of territory challenged the political balance of power in the nation. The national debate over slavery and its expansion was at the root of the sectional tensions that, despite the efforts of many, led to the Civil War.

Texas, the Mexican War, and Slavery’s Expansion

In the two decades after it was adopted in 1820, the Missouri Compromise promised that virtually all the republic’s future expansion westward would be secured from slavery. In fact, however, the compromise only deflected the energies of westward expansion south-westward to the old Spanish domains, where Mexican revolutionaries (following the American example) had overthrown their colonial overlords and created a Mexican Republic in 1823. Achieving political stability proved more difficult for Mexico than for the United States, and in a bid to promote development, the new Mexican government encouraged American immigrants to settle in the northernmost province of Texas in the 1820s. Mexico soon regretted the decision. American settlers arrived in alarming numbers—some 20,000 by the end of the decade—and showed no inclination to either assimilate themselves to Mexican culture or obey Mexican laws banning slavery. In 1835, these *nordamericanos* rose in revolt, and after a gallant but bloody defeat at the Alamo in March 1836, they won a resounding victory over Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 ([link]).

The Compromise of 1850 and the “Popular Sovereignty” Doctrine

But the destiny of the Mexican Cession was by no means so manifest in Congress. The war with Mexico had hardly begun in the summer of 1846 before a Pennsylvania Representative, David Wilmot, proposed an amendment to an appropriations bill that would require “as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico” that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime.” The Wilmot Proviso was angrily countered by South Carolina’s pro-slavery senator John C. Calhoun. Calhoun argued that any territory won from Mexico was the “common property” of all the states, and therefore open for slaveholders to migrate to—with their slaves. Yet another proposal came from a northern Democratic senator, Lewis Cass, who urged that the slavery question be “left to the people…in their respective local governments” who would actually settle in the Cession and should have the final say by “popular sovereignty.” President Polk favored a simple extension of the Missouri Compromise line, all the way to the Pacific Ocean ([link]). But Polk failed, both in mustering support for such an extension and in reconciling any of the other factions, and he left office in 1848 to be followed by a Whig president, the Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor.

Abolitionists and Republicans

Abolitionist was a word few northerners had used to describe themselves before the 1850s; it applied only to a small band of uncompromising opponents of slavery who demanded the immediate and unconditional liberation of all slaves. Their rhetoric was radical. For example, William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist leader and editor of the most prominent abolitionist journal, *The Liberator*, accused the Constitution of complicity with slavery and publicly burned a copy of it with the declaration that it was “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.” (See the William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass on Abolition, 1845–1852 Primary Source.)

🔎 The American Southwest: Tucson in Transition

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the Mexican–American War

🔎 The Free Soil Party

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how regional differences related to slavery caused tension in the years leading up to the Civil War
* Explain the political causes of the Civil War

🔎 The 49ers

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of westward expansion from 1844 to 1877

🔎 Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how regional differences related to slavery caused tension in the years leading up to the Civil War

🔎 Thomas Sims and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

🔎 Harriett Beecher Stowe and <i> Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i>

🔎 Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan

🔎 Nativist Riots and the Know-Nothing Party

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the effects of immigration from various parts of the world on American culture from 1844 to 1877
* Explain the political causes of the Civil War

🔎 Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the political causes of the Civil War

🔎 Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks

🔎 John Brown and Harpers Ferry

🔎 The Election of 1860

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Describe the effects of Lincoln’s election.

📍 Migration West

📍 To Go to War with Mexico?

📍 The Oregon Question: 54–40 or Fight?

📍 The Compromise of 1850

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the similarities and differences in how regional attitudes affected federal policy in the period after the Mexican–American War

💬 To What Extent Were Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion Justified?

Issue on the Table

Was Manifest Destiny a natural outcome of American economic, political, and ideological trends supporting western expansion, or was it an example of American imperialism driven by land hunger, cultural superiority, and racism?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

In 1845, New York editor John L. O’Sullivan wrote that it was “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” In his essay celebrating the annexation of Texas and calling for the taking of California, O’Sullivan coined the term that gave Manifest Destiny its name. In so doing, the Irish American editor pointed to God, to history, to geography, to race, to demographics, and to economics as being the sources for the impulse for the United States to expand into new territories. And he was right. Although American expansionism had many negative consequences, the positive good that resulted far outweighed the costs of the United States not taking the western half of the continent.

Claim B

Manifest Destiny has a nice ring to it. Coined by columnist John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, the phrase perfectly captured the exuberance and idealism of a young nation bent on expanding its “empire of liberty” from sea to shining sea. The idea has survived in public discourse and popular culture right down to the present. “Elbow Room,” an old Schoolhouse Rock cartoon from the 1970s, featured the catchy line “There were plenty of fights to win land rights/But the West was meant to be, it was Manifest Destiny!” In 2012, The Gap rolled out a “Manifest Destiny” T-shirt, only to pull it from the shelves following public outcry over what some considered its celebration of “the mass genocide of indigenous people.” To understand that reaction, we must look beyond O’Sullivan’s glowing words about “the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” We must instead compare the promise of Manifest Destiny with the assumptions beneath it and the effects it had on peoples not initially welcomed within “the glorious blazon of our common nationality.” When we do, we come to see Manifest Destiny not as the natural spirit of an age, but as a propaganda machine hitched to the westering wagons of racial nationalism and settler colonialism.

✒ Frederick Douglass, <i>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass</i>, 1845

Introduction

The best known of the slave narratives was that of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This narrative, published in 1845, was the first of three autobiographies written by Douglass. From this narrative, Douglass presents a very graphic and personal description of life under slavery. Narratives like this served the cause of abolition by humanizing the experience of slavery in a way easily understood by those far removed from plantation life.

✒ Negro Spirituals

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Unit 5F Explain how regional differences related to slavery caused tension in the years leading up to the Civil War

Introduction

In his 1845 autobiography, Frederick Douglass wrote the following about the songs enslaved men and women sang:

✒ John O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” 1845

Introduction

Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836, but President Andrew Jackson declined to annex it for fear of backlash over admitting another slave state. The annexation of Texas was a major issue in the 1844 presidential campaign between Whig candidate Henry Clay and Democratic candidate James Polk. Journalist and Democrat John O’Sullivan wrote the following essay in 1845 in support of annexation. O’Sullivan coined the term Manifest Destiny as he argued for an inevitable expansion of the United States across the North American continent. Texas was annexed to the United States in 1845, but disputes over the southern border continued and contributed to the outbreak of war between the United States and Mexico in 1846.

✒ William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass on Abolition, 1845–1852

Introduction

As the United States expanded in the nineteenth century and the “peculiar institution” spread to more territory with the Louisiana Purchase and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, calls for abolition grew louder. William Lloyd Garrison argued for an immediate end to slavery, maintaining that the Constitution was an inherently flawed document—a “covenant with death”—because it permitted slavery and corrupted the Founding. Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, *The Liberator*, was first published in 1831. Garrison’s passionate writing style demanded his readers’ attention and helped to push the issue of slavery into the spotlight. An excerpt from *The Liberator* is provided in Source A.

✒ Debating the Mexican-American War, May 1846

Introduction

On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk sent a special message to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Mexico. In his message, the president outlined a series of grievances against the Mexican government and argued that the Mexicans had started a war by attacking U.S. soldiers in southern Texas. Congress declared war two days after the message, but the debate continued over the war and the expansion of slavery in the West. Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio issued a scathing reply to Polk two days later and accused the president of starting a war of conquest to safeguard slavery. Giddings was not alone in his beliefs; many northerners and opponents of slavery especially feared that the conflict was an excuse for the expansion of slavery.

✒ Daniel Webster, “7th of March,” 1850

Introduction

Between 1848 and 1855, more than 300,000 people moved to California in search of gold. By 1850, California had more than enough people to apply for statehood and drafted a constitution that banned slavery. This set off a firestorm about the territorial expansion of slavery and the issue threatened to divide the union yet again. In this speech, Daniel Webster, a prominent senator from Massachusetts, laid the groundwork for what would become the Compromise of 1850. Webster’s speech and its primary concession would lead to his losing support at home, and Webster later resigned from the Senate to become secretary of state. Webster viewed this personal sacrifice as worthwhile in the cause for the union.

✒ Fugitive Slave Act, 1850

Introduction

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed as part of a compromise between northerners who opposed slavery and its expansion and southerners who wanted to protect their slaveholding rights and prevent their enslaved workers from escaping to the North. The Fugitive Slave Act required northern law enforcement officers and local governments to assist slave catchers in returning fugitive slaves to their owners. Tightening up on federal enforcement in comparison to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, the law provided for increased numbers of fugitive slave commissioners. The law denied the runaways the right to a jury trial and the right to testify in their own defense. Furthermore, it imposed hefty fines for officials who failed to cooperate in the return of runaways and it offered bounties to those who captured individuals found to be runaway slaves.

✒ Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” 1851

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various reform movements developed and expanded from 1800 to 1848
* Explain how regional differences related to slavery caused tension in the years leading up to the Civil War

Introduction

Born into slavery in New York state, Sojourner Truth escaped in 1826 and devoted much of the rest of her life to championing the causes of abolition and women’s rights. On May 29, 1851, Truth stood before the crowd at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, and delivered a stirring speech. In the months and years that followed, that speech was transcribed by several abolitionists. Ultimately, it came to be titled “Ain’t I a Woman.” Truth never learned to read and write, which makes her leadership all the more remarkable. One of the most famous transcriptions of this speech was published in an 1851 edition of the *Anti-Slavery Bugle* by Reverend Marius Robinson, an Ohio abolitionist who had worked with Truth. Another was published in an 1863 edition of the *Anti-Slavery Standard* by Frances Dana Gage, an abolitionist and feminist who presided over the convention at which Truth spoke. Gage’s transcription accounts for Sojourner Truth’s accent: because Truth was enslaved by Dutch settlers in upstate New York, she spoke with a Dutch accent. Robinson’s account fails to convey this.

✒ Dame Shirley (Mrs. Clappe), Letters from a Western Pioneer, 1851–1852

Introduction

In 1849, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe and her husband Fayette boarded a passenger ship and took a five-month voyage from New York to San Francisco, by way of South America’s Cape Horn. Clappe was a graduate of the Amherst Academy in Massachusetts, and Fayette was a physician. Along with many easterners, they had heard about the discovery of gold in California and were eager to seek their fortune by mining for gold. After making their way to the settlement of Rich Bar in 1851, Clappe began to write a series of letters to her sister, Molly, back east. In her 23 letters, Clappe provided an extraordinarily detailed glimpse of life in the mining camps. Throughout her letters, she used the pseudonym of Dame Shirley. A couple of years after Clappe wrote her final letter, Clappe’s friend Ferdinand C. Ewer published the letters in his journal, *The Pioneer.* With their publication, Clappe’s letters provided a large audience with an opportunity to view pioneer life and the Gold Rush through a woman’s eyes.

✒ Frank Lecouvreur, <i>From East Prussia to the Golden Gate</i>, 1851–1871

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the effects of immigration from various parts of the world on American culture from 1844 to 1877

Introduction

In 1851, Frank Lecouvreur, a 21-year-old native of East Prussia (present-day Germany), left his friends and family behind and immigrated to San Francisco. Lecouvreur spent three months crossing the Atlantic in a passenger ship. After spending some time in Valparaiso, Chile, he had to endure another two-month voyage before finally arriving at his destination. Having arrived in California not long after the start of the Gold Rush, Lecouvreur headed to the countryside and took up a career as a gold miner before he ultimately found success as a county surveyor in Los Angeles. All the while, he sent detailed letters to his parents, in which he reflected on his nearly year-long voyage; the drastic cultural, social, economic, and geographic differences between Prussia and California; his fascination with the American work ethic and freedom of the press; and the hardships he faced as a miner. Five years after Lecouvreur passed away in 1901, his widow, Josephine, whom he had married in 1877, edited nearly 300 pages of his letters and had them translated from German to English by Julius Behnke, a professor of modern languages at Occidental College.

✒ Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” 1854

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why a new national culture developed from 1800 to 1848

Introduction

After escaping from slavery in Richmond, Anthony Burns stowed away on a ship to Boston, where he attempted to start a new life as an employee at a clothing store. However, Burns’s freedom was short-lived because his owner, Charles Suttle, learned of his location and demanded his return under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Although Burns’s lawyers did their best to prove that the law was unconstitutional, Judge Edward Greely Loring ruled that Burns was to be returned to his owner. On July 4, 1854, about a month after Loring had issued his verdict, the transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau delivered a powerful speech to a crowd of abolitionists in Framingham, Massachusetts. In the weeks that followed, Thoreau converted his speech into an essay, which he titled “Slavery in Massachusetts.” Within a year of his return to Richmond, Burns was purchased by funds raised by a black church in Boston and he achieved freedom.

✒ Walt Whitman, <i>Leaves of Grass</i>, 1855

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why a new national culture developed from 1800 to 1848
* Explain how regional differences related to slavery caused tension in the years leading up to the Civil War

Introduction

In 1855, Walt Whitman published 12 poems in a collection entitled *Leaves of Grass.* These poems touched on a variety of themes central to the transcendentalist movement. In his poems, Whitman revealed himself as a champion of the individual and of the working classes as he celebrated the achievements of ordinary men and women in a rapidly industrializing nation. He also demonstrated a respect for the natural environment as he marveled at the beauty inherent in the various American landscapes he frequented. Throughout his work, Whitman departed from traditional poetic techniques and used free verse, which gave his poetry a tone that was less rhythmic and more conversational than traditional poems. Some of Whitman’s readers viewed his book as highly controversial because his poems addressed issues of sexuality and criticized the institution of slavery. Nevertheless, Whitman succeeded in winning over a number of American readers, including the prominent transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman went on to publish several more editions of his anthology that included new poems that touched on a variety of subjects, including the Civil War.

✒ Art Analysis: Hudson River School Landscape Paintings, 1836–1868

Introduction

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Romanticism had a profound influence on music, literature, and art. Romanticism recognized the significance of emotions, the individual, and nature, and it sought to establish links among them. Romantic artists recognized that in painting landscapes, they could convey their feelings regarding a variety of issues, including the fragility of the natural landscape, the encroachment of industry and technology, and the future of the American people. Perhaps the most celebrated group of landscape painters to emerge during the Romantic era was the Hudson River School. This group, which included artists Thomas Cole, Samuel Colman, James McDougal Hart, and Frederic Edwin Church, was based in New York City but ventured up the Hudson Valley and painted the breathtaking scenery they encountered along the way. Other members of this school, such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, journeyed westward and visited mountainous regions, including the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Their work is sometimes classified in a separate school known as the Rocky Mountain School. Unlike previous generations of American artists who copied the artistic subjects of English and Italian art by painting scenes of Europe, the Hudson River School and Rocky Mountain School painted American subjects. These American artists made a radical break from the traditional path of going to study in England or Italy. Thomas Cole, who is considered the founder of the Hudson River School, summed up his feelings about the importance of landscape painting in his “Essay on American Scenery,” a portion of which is provided here.

✒ Lincoln-Douglass Debates, 1858

Introduction

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln challenged Stephen A. Douglas for Douglas’s seat in the U.S. Senate. The two men engaged in seven open-air debates that garnered national attention. Douglas and Lincoln differed in their support of the popular sovereignty doctrine, recently called into question in the 1857 Supreme Court decision of *Dred Scott v. Sandford*. In the Springfield speech, Lincoln famously stated, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and pointed out the flaws in the popular sovereignty doctrine, which had allowed for the inhabitants of a territory to decide by majority vote whether slavery would be permitted there. In his reply two months later, Douglas explained his views on popular sovereignty in what would become known as the Freeport Doctrine. Despite the recent *Dred Scott* decision, Douglas held that the people of the territories had the right to decide for themselves, via the ballot, whether slavery should be permitted in the territory. Though Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, their debates brought Lincoln national attention and ultimately damaged Douglas’s career.

✒ South Carolina Secession Debate, 1860

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Describe the effects of Lincoln’s election

Introduction

On December 17, 1860, the South Carolina legislature called for a convention to discuss whether that state would make the monumental decision to secede from the United States, becoming the first state to take such action. The convention took place in Columbia, but concerns over a smallpox outbreak forced the relocation of the meeting to Charleston, where support for secession was strongest.

✒ Art Analysis: <i>American Progress</i> by John Gast, 1872

Introduction

George Crofutt, a publisher of a popular series of western travel guides, commissioned Brooklyn-based artist John Gast to create “American Progress” in 1872. Crofutt reproduced the painting in his guidebooks; though the image is rich in detail, most Americans would have seen the image at just 12.75 – 16.75 inches. The central female in the image is called Columbia. She is carrying a schoolbook in one hand and a string of telegraph wire in the other. The image has been interpreted to represent the passage of time from left (past) to right (future). Another interpretation is that the entire image is a depiction of the present, with the left representing the West, and the right representing the East. Columbia is moving West and taking the civilization of the East with her, driving off American Indians and bison in the process.

📝 Irish and German Immigration DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

II. Exploration (10 min)

III. Application (25 min)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5 min)

📝 <i> Dred Scott v. Sandford</i>  DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min, depending on activity)

Display either a series of wall maps showing the spread of slavery 1830–1860, or an animated map that demonstrates westward expansion and slave and free states and territories. While referring to the map and pointing out the appropriate locations, review Dred Scott’s story by tracing the places where he lived during his lifetime. Have students read Introduction: Background and Facts of *Dred Scott v. Sandford* (1857) (Handout A).

II. Exploration (20–40 min)

Write the Key Question on the board: **To what extent did the *Dred Scott v. Sandford* decision align with the principles espoused in the Founding documents of the United States?** Keeping this question in view for students, have them work in small groups to read the five documents in the lesson, discussing and answering the sourcing questions and comprehension questions as they go.

III. Application (10–25 min)

Working individually or in groups as best suits the teacher’s procedures and student needs, have students write a response to the Key Question, citing documents to support their opinion.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Conduct an all-class discussion in which students reflect on the impact of the case on identity, law, future policy and enforcement, culture, and sectionalism. Discussion starter questions might include the following:

📝 John Brown: Hero or Villain? DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Begin by walking students through **Handout A: John Brown Background Essay and Timeline** and accompanying discussion question. Distribute **Handout B: Student Document Handout.**

II. Exploration (20–40 min)

Guided by the **Key Question**, students analyze the documents alone, with a partner, or in small groups, as best suits the teacher’s classroom.

III. Application (10–25 min)

Students synthesize the documents by working in small groups to fill in **Handout C: DBQ Document Organizer** and then draft a thesis in response to the **Key Question**. Depending on time available for this lesson, the teacher may also require students to develop an outline, and/or a rough draft of the essay individually or in small groups.

The teacher may assess student work using methods such as:

📝 The Election of Lincoln and the Secession of Southern States DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Students will examine Handout A where they will identify the regional schism that defined the 1860 presidential election. The first document will define the scope of the division, and the second document will give them insight as to how the North and South viewed Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. The teacher should move about the room to confirm that students are carefully examining the evidence and coming to the correct conclusions. When they are having difficulty, the teacher should coach them, pointing out key elements of the documents that need to be interpreted.

II. Exploration (40 min)

Students will examine Handout B to see the nature of the political divide between the southern slaveholding states and the incoming Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln. They will need to read the documents and answer the questions to interpret their main ideas. Student pairs should discuss each document and collaborate on answers to the questions that they are both comfortable supporting. In all cases, text from the documents should be cited as evidence of their conclusions.

III. Application (25 min)

Each student will write an individual reflection essay responding to the prompt: *In what ways did the slaveholding South perceive a threat from Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, and how did they feel the step of secession was not only justified, but that they were compelled to do so?* The essay must make specific citations to the texts to support each claim that is made in the essay.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Each student will conduct a peer review of the reflection essay written by the partner they worked with on this assignment.

✏ Unit 4 Essay Activity

I. Warm Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1860–1877

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 8 Introductory Essay: 1860–1877

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which sectional conflict emerged from 1844 to 1877
* Compare the relative significance of the effects of the Civil War on American values

Introduction

As the spring of 1861 arrived, the United States teetered on the verge of war. Seven southern slaveholding states had seceded from the republic the previous winter and established the Confederate States of America. They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Eight more slave states were contemplating whether to follow suit: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The failure to resolve the sectionalism of the previous decades resulted in a civil war with Americans battling each other and more than 700,000 killed. Since the war was primarily fought over the question of slavery and its expansion, questions of freedom, equality, and justice were central to the war and the reconstruction of the Union after the war. The Civil War and Reconstruction produced significant political, economic, and social transformations in the United States, but for African Americans, the progress had mixed results at best.

The Decision for War

The new president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, the first member of the antislavery Republican party to hold that office, pondered what to do next. Everyone’s attention was focused on the fate of Fort Sumter, located in the harbor outside Charleston, South Carolina. The fort’s garrison, under the command of Major Robert Anderson, was under siege by the Confederate Army and running out of supplies. Would Lincoln choose to evacuate the fort, postponing a confrontation with the new Confederacy, or would he seek to resupply it? Would the Confederacy, under the leadership of its new president, Jefferson Davis, contest such efforts and initiate hostilities? (See the Fort Sumter and the Coming of the War Narrative.)

The Question of European Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy

Within a week of the opening of hostilities, the Lincoln administration declared a blockade of Confederate-controlled ports, which, in turn, induced Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy as a belligerent. During the next several years, Confederate diplomats sought to secure official recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain and France, to be followed by their offer to mediate a peace settlement and, should that proposal fail, their active intervention on behalf of Confederate independence. The Confederacy hoped the value of its cotton exports to English textile mills would secure British involvement. It also believed France would be motivated by its ambitions to restore a transatlantic presence by supporting a puppet government in Mexico ([link]).

Fighting the War

Whereas the Confederacy’s military strategy stressed survival and protection of the homeland, the Union at first looked to fight a limited conventional war, with the issue of slavery set aside. Believing that white southerners were still strongly inclined toward reunion and reconciliation, military planners in the North decided not to strike at the “peculiar institution” of slavery, because the result would embitter southern whites and complicate peace making. General-in-chief Winfield Scott proposed what became known as the Anaconda Plan, featuring the existing blockade of southern ports Lincoln had instituted in April 1861 and an expedition down the Mississippi River ([link]) to constrict southern trade. (See the J.B. Elliott, *Scott’s Great Snake* (Anaconda Plan), 1861 Primary Source.)

The Emancipation Proclamation

Lee managed to make his way back across the Potomac River because McClellan did not renew his attack on September 18. Lincoln, dissatisfied with what he believed to be McClellan’s lethargy and excessive caution, relieved him of command in early November. By that time, Confederate efforts to seize the initiative in Kentucky and Mississippi had fallen short. But it had been clear to Lincoln for several months that it would be necessary to escalate the war by striking against slavery.

Homefront Politics in the North and South

The war had become an effort to destroy slavery to save the Union. With Congress totally in the hands of the North, Republicans used their political power to pass legislation that reflected their vision of the good society fostered by government intervention. For example, they passed the Homestead Act, making it easier for white migrants to move westward and claim land for themselves ([link]) (see The Homestead Act of 1862 Primary Source); the Morrill Tariff to protect domestic industries from foreign competition; the Morrill Land Grant Act, which established the foundation for a wave of public colleges; and the Legal Tender Act to enable the federal government to pay for the conflict and provided the first step toward a federal banking system.

Turning the Tide: Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg

In the spring of 1863, the Army of the Potomac, now under the command of Joseph Hooker, attempted once more to take on Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia along the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers. Although outnumbered by more than two to one, Lee moved audaciously in response to Hooker’s offensive at Chancellorsville and drove him back once more, although this brilliant victory came at a high price when cavalry leader Stonewall Jackson, beloved by his troops, was mortally wounded.

The Final Year of the War

The year 1864 brought a presidential election, and Lincoln realized his chances of reelection depended on maintaining continued public support for a successful war effort. Grant chose to mount a series of coordinated offensives by mobilizing the Union’s military power, including the influx of African American soldiers now available to him. First recruited in significant numbers in 1863, blacks had demonstrated at Milliken’s Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner that they would fight tenaciously for their freedom (see the Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment Narrative). By 1864, as the war became a contest of attrition in which the Union’s superior numbers could be brought to bear, the fact that one in every seven Union soldiers was African American proved critical to success. Complicating the deployment of the men, however, was the Confederacy’s refusal to treat captured black Union soldiers as prisoners of war. On occasion, they slaughtered them in cold blood, notably at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and this led Union authorities to call for an end to exchanging prisoners altogether.

Reconstruction Plans

With the end of the Confederacy’s quest for independence in the Civil War, Americans faced the challenges of reuniting and rebuilding the war-torn nation, restoring the former Confederate states to the Union, and determining the status of former slaves as well as free blacks ([link]). The success of the Reconstruction effort that followed the war was limited by the sometimes conflicting goals of those who simply wanted sectional restoration and those who wanted racial justice for African Americans (see the Cartoon Analysis: *The “Rail Splitter” at Work Repairing the Union*, 1865 Primary Source). The legacy of the Civil War included the central question of what emancipation meant beyond the destruction of the institution of slavery. Reconstruction also tested just how far people were willing to use government power to achieve political, economic, and social ends, and whether the war had transformed the Union and the role of the federal government in life.

The Struggle for African American Rights

Through the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865, Congress and the president took an initial step toward shaping the contours of emancipation by providing for a transition from slavery to freedom (see the O. O. Howard and the Freedmen’s Bureau Narrative). The bureau offered monetary relief to black refugees and white refugees struggling in the aftermath of the war, arbitrated disputes between white landowners and black workers, and did what it could to promote economic and educational opportunities for the freedmen. Some of the legislation’s advocates hoped the Bureau would oversee a much larger program of land confiscation and redistribution that would break the political and economic power of white landowners while providing a foundation of economic freedom for the newly emancipated. However, it took until the war’s end for those questions to assume new importance. (See the Comparing Views of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1866 Primary Source.)

Radical Reconstruction and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Thus, the midterm elections of 1866 became a national referendum on Reconstruction, as Johnson sought to erode Republican congressional majorities while Republicans looked to secure veto-proof supermajorities. In a contest made memorable by a disastrous speaking tour by the president, called the Swing Around the Circle, Republicans prevailed by presenting themselves as the party that would best protect the fruits of northern victory against the threats posed by former Confederates and their northern Democratic allies. In the aftermath of defeat, Johnson urged southern state legislatures to reject the Fourteenth Amendment, persuading Republicans to renew their efforts to seek legislative solutions.

The Grant Administration

In accepting the Republican nomination, war hero Ulysses S. Grant declared, “Let us have peace.” This pledge looked to an end of political strife, sectional disputes, anti-black violence, and partisan bickering, and it was offered by someone who seemed to be above partisan politics and who promised to restore order. It did not hurt Republican prospects that Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour had addressed New York draft rioters in 1863 as “my friends,” or that his running mate, Francis P. Blair, Jr., pledged to undo Reconstruction legislation.

🔎 Fort Sumter and the Coming of the War

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the various factors that contributed to the Union victory in the Civil War

🔎 The Battle of Antietam

🔎 Gettysburg and Vicksburg: July 4, 1863

🔎 The Draft and the Draft Riots of 1863

🔎 Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment

🔎 Women during the Civil War

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the effects of government policy during Reconstruction on society from 1865 to 1877

🔎 Mary Chesnut’s War

🔎 Clement Vallandigham and Constitutionalism

🔎 William Tecumseh Sherman and Total War

🔎 O. O. Howard and the Freedmen’s Bureau

🔎 The Ku Klux Klan and Violence at the Polls

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why Reconstruction resulted in continuity and change in regional and national understandings of what it meant to be American

📍 Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of the war

📍 Grant and Lee at Appomattox

📍 The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

💬 Was the Civil War Fought Over Slavery?

Issue on the Table

Did the Civil War have many causes, including sectional differences over politics, economic issues, culture, and slavery, or was the Civil War fundamentally caused by sectional differences over slavery and its westward expansion?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

It would be foolish to claim that the Civil War had little to do with slavery. In many ways, slavery was the fundamental difference between North and South, and many sectional divisions were at least partially rooted in the presence of slavery in the South and its expansion elsewhere. Yet slavery itself did not cause the Civil War. After all, slavery was a national, not southern, institution until the early nineteenth century, and the Founders had been able to form a nation despite differences over slavery. In fact, the growth of the New England textile industry owed much to the profitability of plantation cotton grown in the South. Moreover, if the Civil War was fought over slavery, why did Abraham Lincoln and a majority of Union policymakers drag their feet until 1862 when it came to striking at the “peculiar institution?” Why, indeed, were white politicians able to reach a series of compromises over slavery and its expansion westward for the first seven decades of the new republic before that process collapsed in the 1850s?

Claim B

The question of whether the Civil War was fought over slavery has set northerner against southerner and historian against historian since the whole catastrophe began. It hangs in the air still, an ever-floating controversy. But it is very difficult to make a valid case—as many southerners tried to do, and still try to do, along with several historians—that sectional differences over slavery and its threatened expansion into the western territories were not the fundamental cause, the bedrock cause, of the Civil War. Let us examine several different arguments that are usually put forth and see what they tell us about slavery as a cause.

💬 Did Abraham Lincoln Exceed His Presidential Powers during the Civil War?

Issue on the Table

Were the actions of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War tyrannical or consistent with the ideals of republican government?

Instructions

Claim A

Was Lincoln a tyrant? Over the years, many have answered in the affirmative. At the least, his critics and even some supporters argue he acted as a dictator. Indeed, Lincoln has been described by historians—both those who praise him and those who criticize him—as a dictator far more than any other president. In 1861, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve 90 days in the military, claiming that he faced a rebellion “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Claim B

A republic is a form of government in which sovereignty is understood to belong to the people, who exercise it through the medium of the representatives they select to act as their government. This doctrine of self-government is what Abraham Lincoln deemed “right--absolutely and eternally right.” The three principles he saw as the foundations of republican government were the natural equality of every human being, as described in the Declaration of Independence; the sovereignty over their affairs, which the people possess as equals; and the subordination of government to the will and interests of those people.

💬 To What Extent Did American Principles Become a Reality for African Americans during Reconstruction?

Issue on the Table

To what extent did Reconstruction actually benefit African Americans? Did they emerge from this period in a virtual state of slavery, or, despite many obstacles, did Reconstruction result in some progress for African Americans?

Instructions

Claim A

What did the end of slavery mean for once-enslaved African Americans? Emancipation might mean the destruction of slavery, but what did freedom mean for several million people? To be sure, a series of constitutional amendments brought an end to the institution of slavery, defined U.S. citizenship to include African Americans (thus definitively overturning the 1857 *Dred Scott* decision), and removed race, color, or previous condition of servitude as a barrier to voting by male citizens. Moreover, emancipation saw the reunification of families previously torn apart by sale, removal, and war. Therefore, Reconstruction presented an opportunity for African Americans to control their own lives, their families, and, to some extent, their work and education. And, for a brief, shining moment, it allowed them to take part in politics as voters and officeholders.

Claim B

Although the promise of Reconstruction and the early days after emancipation remained largely unfulfilled for African Americans until the Civil Rights era, Reconstruction did lead to progress for African Americans; however, this progress was brief and halting. W. E. B. Du Bois, the leading black activist of the first half of the twentieth century, put it this way: “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun; and then moved back again toward slavery.”

✒ J.B. Elliott, <i>Scott’s Great Snake</i>  (Anaconda Plan), 1861

Introduction

Few families did not have a member who was an enlisted soldier during the Civil War. Maps helped family members locate their loved ones serving far from home, and commercial publishers, especially in the North, issued maps in large quantities during the war. In 1861, J. B. Elliott of Cincinnati published the following cartoon map entitled *Scott’s Great Snake*. The map references General Winfield Scott’s plan to blockade the Confederacy’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts and launch a major offensive down the Mississippi River to divide the South in two. Elliott’s map compares Scott’s scheme to an anaconda, a large South American snake that squeezes and crushes its prey. The comparison implies that the plan would take time to work, yet Scott’s strategy, in fact, contribute to an eventual Northern victory.

✒ Daniel Emmett’s “Dixie” and Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1859 and 1861

Introduction

“Dixie” (Source A) was likely written by Daniel Emmett, an Ohioan who introduced the song during a performance in New York City. “Dixie” was written for performance in a minstrel show and grew in popularity in the 1850s. Minstrel shows consisted of spoken and musical acts performed by white people in blackface makeup, though some African American performers and groups toured under the direction of white people. Though heavily influenced by African American traditions in singing, dancing, and music, minstrel shows stereotyped African Americans as clumsy or dim-witted. After the Civil War, African American musical groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers worked to overcome these stereotypes by touring extensively and exposing audiences to the dignity and gravitas of African American music, such as the Negro spiritual. Before the Civil War, “Dixie” and the minstrel shows in which it was featured were popular across the country. After the outbreak of war, the Confederacy adopted the tune as its marching song.

✒ The Homestead Act of 1862

Introduction

The Homestead Act was passed to encourage the settlement of new western frontier lands. In addition to the development of this land, with the Homestead Act, people were encouraged to establish small, independent farms. The Republicans in particular advocated this position, because it fit their vision of the founding principles of the United States—a vision closely tied to that of the Jeffersonian “yeoman farmer” as the ideal American. Jeffersonians, in turn, reflected John Locke’s view that property is acquired when a person mixes his or her labor with nature, improving it for his or her purposes. The Homestead Act sought to economically develop the resources of the American frontier while encouraging personal development in those who would serve to expand American democratic principles.

✒ Mathew Brady, <i>The Dead of Antietam</i>  Photography, 1862

Introduction

Mathew Brady was a New York photojournalist, best known for his collection of photography documenting the Civil War. Commonly referred to as the “father of photojournalism,” Brady studied under Samuel F. B. Morse and opened his own photography studios in New York and Washington DC, where he took photographs of prominent Americans of the time, including Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John James Audubon. Once the Civil War began, he began marketing *cartes de visite* (small photographs the size of a business card) to parents of departing soldiers so they could have images to keep of their sons while they were off at war. Brady soon decided to document the war and, with permission from President Lincoln, he organized and self-financed a team of photographers who took thousands of photographs documenting camp life and battlefield scenes. One of these photographers on Brady’s team, Alexander Gardner, took all the photographs featured. In 1862, Brady’s exhibit *The Dead of Antietam* showed the public the first ever photographs of a battlefield before the dead had been removed. These images received extensive media attention, with the *New York Times* saying, “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war.”

✒ Images of Total War: Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1865

Introduction

The campaign of total war, waged by Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant, was a military policy that broke from the norms of the time. Instead of having explicitly military targets, Union forces sought to destroy the Confederacy’s ability to maintain the war effort. In doing so, this policy also sought to subject the population of the South to extreme hardship to break their will and to destroy the material needed to continue in armed rebellion against the government. This policy was implemented particularly effectively by General William T. Sherman’s forces during his Atlanta campaign and those that followed the fall of Atlanta. These images capture some of the devastation wrought by the policy of total war upon Georgia and South Carolina, the birthplace of the rebellion.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: <i>The “Rail Splitter” at Work Repairing the Union</i>, 1865

Introduction

As the Civil War was drawing to a close in the spring of 1865, there was debate about the terms the South would face upon its defeat. President Abraham Lincoln proposed a policy of reconstruction that sought to reunify the Union as smoothly and painlessly as possible, a theme evident in his second inaugural address in March 1865. This view was not universal, however; there were many among the “Radical” Republicans who were critical of Lincoln’s policy and felt the South should be punished for its act of treason. This political cartoon, drawn in 1865 by Joseph E. Baker, was a take on this controversy.

✒ Comparing Views of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1866

Introduction

After emancipation and the conclusion of the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created to help integrate formerly enslaved persons into American society. It did so in a variety of ways but with a focus on education and training that aimed to enable African Americans to support themselves and their families and become productive citizens. However, there was opposition to the Bureau, both for the perceived wastefulness of some of its programs as well as hardened opposition to its goals of integrating African Americans. The following images depict two perspectives on the Freedmen’s Bureau.

✒ Andrew Johnson’s Veto of the Civil Rights Act, 1866

Introduction

After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson ascended to the presidency. Lincoln had selected Johnson, a former Democrat from Tennessee, as his vice presidential candidate because Johnson’s presence appeased southern sympathizers who desired a quick peace process. Johnson, however, fought constantly with the Republican majority in Congress. One of their major disagreements was over the federal government’s role in promoting social, political, and economic equality for former slaves and other blacks. On March 27, 1866, in a message to Congress regarding their proposed civil rights legislation, Johnson explained his constitutional concerns about the bill. In the end, Johnson refused to sign the bill because he believed Congress had no right to guarantee citizenship within the states or to enforce legislation on the individual states. In addition, he challenged the portions of the law that guaranteed full social, political, and economic equality for freedmen by challenging their fitness to vote and become fully functioning members of society.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Thomas Nast on Reconstruction, 1869–1874

Introduction

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving holiday. Six years later, in 1869, Thomas Nast’s “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” appeared in the November 20 issue of *Harper’s Weekly*. *Harper’s Weekly* covered domestic and foreign news as well as fiction, essays, and illustrations. Thomas Nast was the magazine’s most famous and influential contributor; his work appeared in *Harpers Weekly* from the late 1850s to the mid-1880s. When Nast’s Thanksgiving cartoon was published in 1869, Congress had recently passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted men the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and state legislatures were in the process of debating the ratification of the amendment.

📝 The Emergence of Black Codes DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Direct students to the key question for this lesson at the top of Handout A: In what ways did the legal status of African Americans change after emancipation and the Reconstruction Amendments, and in what ways did their experience remain the same as under the institution of slavery? Have students examine Document 1: Virginia Slave Codes: “An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves,” 1705; and Document 2: Runaway Slave Ad, 1860, in Handout A. In these they will identify the legal and personal status of African Americans under the institution of slavery. The first document will define the scope of that legal status by examining the first laws passed to define them. The second will help illustrate this status with a very personal example.

II. Exploration (40 min)

Students will examine the remaining documents in Handout A to evaluate changes and continuities in the nature of the legal and practical status of African Americans. They will read the documents and answer the questions to interpret their main ideas. The teacher should move about the room to confirm that students are carefully examining the evidence and correctly interpreting the documents.

III. Application (25 min)

Each student will outline their response to the following prompt: In what ways did the legal status of African Americans change after emancipation and the Reconstruction Amendments, and in what ways did their experience remain the same as under the institution of slavery? The essay must make specific citations to the texts to support each claim made in the essay.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Student will conduct a peer review of the essay outline written by a partner using the DBQ rubric from the College Board as a guide.

📝 The Rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Direct students to the key question for this lesson at the top of Handout A: To what extent does Lincoln’s rhetoric reveal that he considered the Civil War a second American founding?

II. Exploration (40 min)

Students will read the remaining documents in Handout A and answer the accompanying comprehension questions.

III. Application (20 min)

Each student will outline their response to the following prompt: To what extent does Lincoln’s rhetoric reveal that he considered the Civil War a second American founding? The essay must make specific citations to the texts to support each claim which is made in the essay.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

📝 Comparing Impeachments across U.S. History

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Write this question on the board: If a U.S. president does the following actions, should she or he be formally accused, tried, and removed from office if found guilty in a fair trial? Then list actions 1–5 below the question and have students write on a sheet of paper their yes or no answer to each. Students should be prepared to explain their reasoning. After students have individually voted “yes” or “no” for each action, then call for a show of hands for each action to tally the student results. Start with the action that received the most “yes” votes and ask a few student volunteers to justify their response by referring to a specific part of the U.S. Constitution. Explain that “impeach” does not mean “remove from office.” Impeach means to formally accuse and bring to trial. According to the U.S. Constitution, if a president is impeached by a majority vote of the House of Representatives and found guilty by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, the punishment is removal from office. Wait until the end of the lesson to give the historical examples.

II. Exploration (20 min)

Distribute the resource packet for the lesson and assign the background and primary source readings to students. Assign the readings as best fits your teaching situation (e.g., small groups, jigsaw). Using **Handout A: What were the Founders’ Intentions Regarding Impeachment?**, assign the following speaking parts: Narrator, George Washington, George Mason, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Elbridge Gerry, and Alexander Hamilton, and give them a few moments to preview their parts. Then present the role play. Next, assign students to work in small groups to discuss the constitutional provisions related to impeachment in order to answer the Questions for Discussion at the bottom of **Handout A.**

III. Application (30 min)

Using **Handout B: Impeachment in U.S. History**, have students read the four narratives and answer the Comprehension Questions at the end of each one.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Write a few of the Reflection Questions on the board and conduct a whole-class discussion to provide a big-picture view of the use of impeachment with respect to the American presidency. Close by having students write their responses to Reflection Question 7: Using 50 words or fewer, answer this question: How has the process of impeachment affected the institution of checks and balances in American politics?

📝 Unit 4 Civics Connection: Equality, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Ask students to write their own short definitions of equality, federalism, and checks and balances. Depending on your students’ background and familiarity with constitutional principles, you may or may not allow them to consult the Glossary of Principles and Virtues. After allowing for a few minutes of discussion, write on the board the class definitions of these three principles for student reference throughout the lesson. Distribute **Student Handout A: Equality and the Civil War Student Packet**.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Have students read the **Timeline 1848–1876: Events Related to Equality**, marking the following characteristics on their copy. You may prefer to have your students work individually, in pairs, or in small groups as best suits your classroom needs.

III. Application (10–25 min)

Conclude by having students write an individual response to the guiding question and collect their responses. Civics Connection Unit 4 Guiding Question: To what extent did the Civil War and Reconstruction lead to the fulfillment of the promises of the Founding regarding the proposition that all men are created equal? In your response, be sure to consider how differing approaches to the principles of federalism and checks and balances over time affected the ability of African Americans to exercise their inalienable right to equality by 1876.

✏ Unit 4 Essay Activity

Objectives:

**Resources:**

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1877–1898

1877–1898

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 9 Introductory Essay: 1877–1898

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the historical context for the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States

Introduction

The late nineteenth century saw the rapid growth of the American economy as technological developments and immigration led to the rise of an industrial, mass-production society. American capitalism drew on the country’s vast natural resources, the ready supply of laborers, and the expertise and determination of a new class of industrialists. Railroads provided a powerful medium for wealth creation, giving rise to the modern corporation, innovations in finance, and increasing demand for steel, machinery, oil, and laborers of all kinds. As railroad networks expanded, the cost of freight plummeted, creating opportunities for national distribution networks, new consumer-driven industries, and the emergence of advertising and national brands (see The Transcontinental Railroad Narrative).

The Rise of Big Business

Steel, oil, and machinery magnates emerged as innovators of historical importance, pioneering new production methods and technology that transformed the daily life of nineteenth-century Americans. Andrew Carnegie introduced into his steel factories numerous technological innovations that drove down the price of steel, giving his company a competitive advantage over rivals that led it to dominate the steel industry and indirectly benefit consumers via lower prices (see the Andrew Carnegie and the Creation of U.S. Steel Narrative). Telephone service began its rise to prominence during the Gilded Age, thanks to Boston-based researcher Alexander Graham Bell. Thomas Edison ([link]), called the “Wizard of Menlo Park” in a reference to his New Jersey laboratory, introduced the possibilities of electrification and other forms of energy, recorded sound, moving pictures, and other inventions for mass production and consumerism. Nikola Tesla, an immigrant from Croatia, made several inventions in electricity, motors, and wireless communications. Combined with the telegraph, these inventions led to a communications revolution and tied distant markets together. The technological innovations also created economies of scale that allowed corporations to produce goods more efficiently and less expensively.

Workers and Unions

The industrial factory system changed the nature of work from the agricultural and artisan pace of the early nineteenth century. It also caused a great deal of suffering for millions of workers in factories by demanding conformity to wage and work schedules that maximized output and profits. Employees labored in factories polluted by noise and filth and risked hazards to life and limb, such as those that resulted in the death or injury of one in four Pennsylvania steelworkers. Women and children in the workforce often had low-paying and dangerous jobs in factories and mines.

The West

Millions crossed the Mississippi River in the late nineteenth century, using rail transportation and claiming land under the 1862 Homestead Act to take advantage of celebrated opportunities in the West. This migration relieved some of the pressures of urban and town life in the East. Moreover, according to historian Frederick Jackson Turner, the pioneer experience epitomized and shaped what became the American ethos of individualism and self-reliance (see the Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893 Primary Source). Resourceful individualism and courage in the face of danger and hazards of the frontier had made America great, according to Turner’s thesis (see the Was Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis Myth or Reality? Point-Counterpoint). In addition to the individual efforts of millions of settlers, the federal government played a pivotal role in smoothing the way for westward migration through policies aiding railroads and distributing public lands for development. Such policies stimulated the western economy in the late nineteenth century, particularly for newly established farmers, miners, and ranchers.

American Indians

The destruction of the buffalo hurt the plains tribes that depended on the animals for food and furs. It also dovetailed with broader pressures to reduce the autonomy of American Indians in the West, many of whom became embroiled in a final series of military conflicts. By the late nineteenth century, western Indians existed in a shrinking area of traditional autonomy. The Sioux, Arapaho, and other nations of the Northwest were signatories of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, an agreement that introduced tribal reservations and annual payments by the federal government in exchange for lands ceded to settlers and guarantees of safe passage for migrants. Older treaties offered recognition to certain native populations in Indian Territory, including transplants such as the Cherokee and other formerly southeastern and Great Lakes tribes. In the Southwest, federal authorities struggled to contain nomadic Apache and Comanche peoples on substandard desert reservations, resorting to armed expeditions in search of dissident bands such as Geronimo’s Chiricahua Apaches. Troops engaged American Indians in several key battles, including the 1876 Sioux defeat of General Custer at Little Bighorn and the army’s massacre of Lakota families at Wounded Knee in 1890 (see the George Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn Narrative).

Immigration

Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 23 million immigrants came to the United States from Europe, Asia, and Mexico in search of opportunity and freedom from persecution (see the Industry and Immigration in the Gilded Age Lesson). They moved to cities primarily, working in factory jobs and living in poorer, overcrowded neighborhoods. New arrivals from Europe, Asia, and the North American countryside toiled alongside native-born city dwellers, sharing urban experiences with strangers even while many chose to reside in ethnic enclaves. Immigrant communities emerged in urban, ethnic enclaves of Chinatowns or Little Italys that offered support networks and familiar foods, language, and worship opportunities. Urban elites invested in charitable programs designed to hasten the Americanization of new immigrants, among them reformer Jane Addams, whose Hull House provided services such as English-language classes, child care, and instruction in civics (see the Jane Addams, Hull House, and Immigration Narrative).

African Americans

Also during the Gilded Age, African Americans in the South endured the emergence of the “Jim Crow” system. The progress and political gains made possible by post–Civil War constitutional amendments and Reconstruction soon regressed after a series of Supreme Court decisions and tactical victories by white supremacists. The first element of the unraveling was white violence, enabled by the retreat of the federal government from its role as the defender of black citizenship. By the 1880s, the terror conducted by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups after the end of Reconstruction had suppressed black voter participation to less than one-third of age-eligible men. Having seized control of politics, white southerners passed discriminatory laws, the worst of which aimed at the economic and political subjugation of black neighbors. A segregated and unequal public education system offered black students little opportunity to advance. Jim Crow laws and practices, such as segregation on railway cars and other accommodations, also attached daily humiliations to African Americans’ public life (see the *Plessy v. Ferguson* (1896) Narrative, the Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching Narrative, and the Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law,” 1893 Primary Source).

The Growth of Cities

The appeal of urban life in the late nineteenth century drew Americans of all races and backgrounds. Jobs provided the main attraction. Cities and factory towns employed a mostly unskilled workforce. In addition, a growing middle stratum of office workers served as clerks and managers in increasingly complex corporate enterprises.

Politics

Advocates of political reform operated mostly outside the two-party system; for example, the farmers who formed the People’s Party movement of the 1890s and the members of the women’s suffrage movement. High voter turnout and elevated partisanship among Democrats and Republicans characterized the period after the Civil War, but the major party platforms differed little on ideological and policy issues; both parties were reluctant to alienate voters and about equally beholden to corporate interests. Disputes surrounding free trade and protectionism provided one point of contrast, with pro-manufacturing Republicans such as President William McKinley campaigning for high tariffs to keep jobs in the Northeast, and farmer-friendly Democrats campaigning as free traders. Grover Cleveland was the only Democratic president of the era, riding anti-tariff sentiment to two nonconsecutive terms in the White House.

Farmers and Populism

The business-friendly orientation of the major parties created an opening for the rise of the most ambitious third-party movement in American history to date: the People’s Party, or the Populists (see the Ignatius Donnelly and the 1892 Populist Platform Narrative). Populism had its origins among disgruntled farmers, for whom post–Civil War “grange” organizations had offered a platform to critique what they perceived to be the oppressive role of banks and railroads in agricultural life ([link]). Farmers often blamed big business for a long-term decline in the prices they received for their goods. They tried to form grange cooperatives to market their goods together and drive up the prices for them.

Foreign Policy

Initial moves toward establishing an overseas American empire served national strategic and economic interests. Ideas about racial superiority, and the civilizing mission of Social Darwinists who saw non-Western peoples as inferior and in need of uplift, also played a role. Many Americans and Europeans saw it as their duty to civilize other races around the globe. U.S. missionaries carried the flag to distant locations and petitioned the government to support military and economic missions in East Asia, West Africa, and the Pacific. Missionaries-turned-investors sponsored the Hawaiian Revolt of 1887–1893, installing the Christian fruit-grower Sanford B. Dole as president of a newly proclaimed Hawaiian Republic (see the The Annexation of Hawaii DBQ Lesson and the The Annexation of Hawaii Narrative).

🔎 The Transcontinental Railroad

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the settlement of the West from 1877 to 1898

🔎 The Brooklyn Bridge

🔎 George Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

🔎 William “Boss” Tweed and Political Machines

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the similarities and differences between the political parties during the Gilded Age

🔎 Andrew Carnegie and the Creation of U.S. Steel

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the effects of technological advances in the development of the United States over time
* Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898
* Explain the causes of increased economic opportunity and its effects on society

🔎 Cowboys and Cattle Drives

🔎 Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how various factors contributed to continuity and change in the “New South” from 1877 to 1898

🔎 The Annexation of Hawaii

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898
* Explain continuities and changes in the role of the government in the U.S. economy

🔎 Jane Addams, Hull House, and Immigration

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the various responses to immigration in the period over time
* Explain how different reform movements responded to the rise of industrial capitalism in the Gilded Age

🔎 Ignatius Donnelly and the 1892 Populist Platform

🔎 The Homestead Strike

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the socioeconomic continuities and changes associated with the growth of industrial capitalism from 1865 to 1898

🔎 <i> Plessy v. Ferguson</i>  (1896)

📍 The Chinese Exclusion Act

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how cultural and economic factors affected migration patterns over time

💬 Were the Titans of the Gilded Age “Robber Barons” or “Entrepreneurial Industrialists”?

Issue on the Table

Were the industrial titans of the Gilded Age “robber barons” seeking profit at the expense of their workforce, or were they simply entrepreneurial industrialists whose rapidly growing industries provided thousands of well-paying jobs to less-skilled workers?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Big tasks require big enterprises. No mom-and-pop store could build a transcontinental railroad, not when a single mile of track cost more than most small firms were worth; the complicated finances of the Pennsylvania Railroad required more than 100 separate sets of accounts and myriad specialized departments to manage them. Able to invest in expensive machinery, a single company could turn out cigarettes faster than an army of craftspeople and for a fraction of the cost. By 1900, America ate better, dressed more cheaply, and got to places faster, all because of mammoth firms—the wheat of Minnesota’s Red River Valley turned into bread on tables in Mississippi and Maine. Who could doubt that bigness in business was better?

Claim B

The term “robber baron” refers to the entrepreneurs who built this country’s industrial base, transportation infrastructure, and financial markets in the post–Civil War era. The term, supposedly, comes from the medieval nobility who lived along the Rhine River and charged tolls on passing boats. Those robber barons, of course, were exactly that, robbers. They created no wealth. Instead they extracted it from passers-by under threat of violence. It was what today we would call a protection racket.

💬 Were Urban Bosses Essential Service Providers or Corrupt Politicians?

Issue on the Table

Were urban bosses corrupt politicians who manipulated the political system for their own control and gain, or were they providing essential services for immigrants and enabling the growth of cities despite corrupt means?

Instructions

Claim A

“So, you see, these fool critics don’t know what they’re talking about when they criticize Tammany Hall, the most perfect political machine on earth,” explained George Washington Plunkitt, the son of Irish immigrants who grew up in squalor in New York City’s Five Points neighborhood and later became a prominent figure in Tammany Hall, the most well-known urban political circle in American history. William “Boss” Tweed was the powerful leader of Tammany, the machine that eventually became synonymous with the Democratic Party of New York City. Bosses like Tweed worked their way up to the top of well-run political circles by securing political positions through patronage and the spoils system. By delivering on promises of socioeconomic and political improvement in exchange for votes, bosses built urban empires with supporters in various city (and, at times, state-level) positions working continuously to ensure a voter base. In return, voters afforded the bosses power to secure their own political and, in many cases, financial gains. Bosses typically had no qualms with engaging in questionable and often downright corrupt money-for-politics schemes, securing political positions to guarantee financial benefits to their supporters in the form of contracts for public building projects or favorable city tax and regulation codes. Plunkitt responded to the charge of corruption from many of the growing army of muckraking journalists; however, it is the characterization of the bosses as criminals who preyed on the many immigrants in cities in return for votes—“buying” political support from those who were most economically, politically, and socially vulnerable and in the process tainting America’s democratic process—that encourages historians to describe them as vultures of the Gilded Age. Urban bosses bribed and exploited immigrants for political gain and tossed them to the side when they were no longer needed. But this simplistic view of men like Boss Tweed ignores the social services that urban bosses provided to the downtrodden in the complex and often labyrinthine environment of America’s Gilded Age cities.

Claim B

“For good service,” a city boss allegedly protested, “what’s a little 5 percent taken on the side?” Constituent service was the chief defense machine politics gave for the payoffs it gave to its grafters and crooks: the so-called paint-eaters, so greedy they supposedly gobbled the very paint off the walls of the offices they were given; the paper pushers who kicked back “rice pudding,” part of their salary to the man at the top; the city councilmen whose inside information let them take advantage of the city by contracting to build its roads and sewers at inflated prices; the lawmakers who fattened their bank accounts every time they handed out streetcar line franchises. Who were the voters to complain if Richard Croker, Tammany Hall’s chief, worked for his pocket, the same as they? In return, the machine boasted that it acted as the fair broker between all the conflicting interests of the city. It fixed broken street lamps, it expanded sewer lines and paving, and gave every inhabitant a chance to find not just a cold, impersonal bureaucratic justice but help.

💬 Was Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis Myth or Reality?

Issue on the Table

Was Turner’s thesis a myth about the individualism of the American character and the influence of the West or was it essentially correct in explaining how the West and the advancing frontier contributed to the shaping of individualism in the American character?

Instructions

Claim A

Every nation has a creation myth, a simple yet satisfying story that inspires pride in its people. The United States is no exception, but our creation myth is all about exceptionalism. In his famous essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that the process of westward expansion had transformed our European ancestors into a new breed of people endowed with distinctively American values and virtues. In particular, the frontier experience had supposedly fostered democracy and individualism, underpinned by the abundance of “free land” out West. “So long as free land exists,” Turner wrote, “the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.” It was a compelling articulation of the old Jeffersonian Dream. Like Jefferson’s vision, however, Turner’s thesis excluded much of the nation’s population and ignored certain historical realities concerning American society.

Claim B

Young historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his academic paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago on July 12, 1893. He was the final presenter of that hot and humid day, but his essay ranks among the most influential arguments ever made regarding American history.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Thomas Nast Takes on “Boss” Tweed, 1871

Introduction

From an early age, William “Boss” Tweed discovered he had a knack for politics. His political career began in 1850, when he ran as an alderman from the Seventh Ward of New York City. He served a frustrating term in Congress during the divisive sectional tensions of the 1850s and then happily returned to local politics, where he believed the action was. He quickly became one of the leading, and most corrupt, politicians in New York City. Tweed and his cronies in Tammany Hall—the organization that controlled the Democratic Party and most of its votes—directed local services, controlled elections, and received millions of dollars in kickbacks, bribes, and other forms of brazen corruption.

✒ The Dawes Act, 1887

Introduction

The Dawes Act of 1887 was passed in an effort to alleviate American Indian poverty. Most Americans in positions of power believed at the time that it was necessary for American Indians to adopt the Western way of life to emerge from the poverty that existed on the reservations. United States political leaders believed the Indians’ way of life was less civilized and that for them to improve their condition, it was essential for them to adopt the principles of private property. The Dawes Act offered the incentive of full U.S. citizenship to motivate American Indians to accept this change. However, the act was controversial because it also was designed to destroy the social fabric of tribal life and the traditional way of life for many American Indian tribes.

✒ Images from the Carlisle Indian School, 1880s

Introduction

After the Civil War, people headed west beyond the Mississippi River by the millions. As they moved, they encountered diverse American Indian groups who had lived in these regions for generations. Some were members of eastern tribes such as the Cherokee or Creeks who had been forcibly resettled, whereas other tribes had always lived in the West. As the numbers of Anglo-American migrants increased, so did violence with American Indian groups who saw these settlers as encroachers on their land. In addition, U.S. military victories and the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887 severely weakened American Indian resistance to the increasing number of Anglo-American settlers. In the 1880s, the federal government adopted a policy of assimilation of American Indians by focusing on educating the youth. The Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, was created with the goal of assimilating American Indian youth through education. Pratt subscribed to the principle “kill the Indian [in him] and save the man.” At Carlisle, young boys and girls were subjected to a complete transformation. If they exhibited any “Indian behaviors,” they were punished. “Before” and “after” photographs were used as proof of the success of the Carlisle model. Study the “before” and “after” photographs before answering the questions that follow.

✒ Grover Cleveland’s Veto of the Texas Seed Bill, 1887

Introduction

Grover Cleveland was the first Democrat to be elected president after the Civil War and the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms in the White House, a feat that demonstrated the single-minded tenacity he used to try to implement what he understood the Constitution to say. Cleveland, a strict constructionist, believed individual citizens were capable of decision-making without the need for a parental relationship with the federal government. During his first term, this belief was challenged by proposed legislation to alleviate the consequences of a drought in the state of Texas. Amid the calls for more federal assistance, President Cleveland stood firm and vetoed the legislation.

✒ Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887, 1888

Introduction

*Looking Backward, 2000–1887*, is a utopian science fiction novel written by American author and socialist Edward Bellamy. Bellamy was first exposed to the plight of the urban poor as a young man studying law. He later worked as a journalist in Massachusetts and New York before he began to publish short stories. With the publication of *Looking Backward, 2000–1887*, Bellamy described a United States operating in the future under his vision of an ideal socialist system. The novel’s narrator, a wealthy man named Julian West, lives in Boston in the year 1887. Julian lives to see the year 2000 after surviving an accident in a state of suspended animation. He experiences an ideal Boston that is vastly different than the Boston he lived in during the nineteenth century: the government owns and directs all means of production and divides products fairly among all citizens. Living in such a place causes Julian to come to believe that nineteenth-century Boston is inhumane. *Looking Backward, 2000–1887*, drew a huge following across the United States, in social and economic circles. Several “Bellamy Societies” or clubs sprang up, expressing their interest in social and economic reform. In the following excerpt, Julian explains some of the differences between the way people lived in 1887 and the way they lived in the year 2000.

✒ Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law,” 1893

Introduction

In the wake of Reconstruction, southern states began to pass Jim Crow laws that required the segregation of races in public buildings, transportation, and services, and prevented African Americans from voting. The consequences for breaking Jim Crow laws could be severe, and accusations made against African Americans were often arbitrary. Rather than being considered “innocent until proven guilty,” African Americans were routinely attacked and punished by white mobs for alleged crimes. Sometimes, whites lynched African Americans simply to remind them that they possessed no power.

✒ Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893

Introduction

Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. Turner is best known for his “Frontier Thesis,” an idea put forth in the essay excerpted. This essay was presented to a special meeting of the American Historical Association during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. In this essay, Turner argued that the frontier shaped key elements of the American experience. Turner’s Frontier Thesis stimulated an intense debate among historians about the American character in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

✒ Booker T. Washington, “Speech to the Cotton States and International Exposition,” 1895

Introduction

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Virginia, but in 1865 became free at age 9 years. He came of age in the South during Reconstruction and worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and Wayland Seminary. He became a teacher and founded Tuskegee Institute to provide higher education for blacks. He emphasized the need for blacks to gain a “practical education,” what we might call vocational training today. Many whites in the North and the South welcomed his message of self-help and his seeming willingness to accept social segregation between blacks and whites. Washington delivered this 1895 speech to a mostly white audience at the Atlanta and Cotton States Exhibition, an event designed to showcase new agricultural technology in the South and encourage more trade between the South and Latin America. Washington’s speech is a response to the Jim Crow conditions of discrimination faced by blacks in the South and to the New South movement, which sought to promote industrial development in the South.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Immigration in the Gilded Age, 1882–1896

Introduction

The late nineteenth century experienced one of the largest mass migrations in history. Millions of immigrants came to the United States from other parts of North America, as well as from Europe and Asia. Immigrants, who settled in the United States primarily for the economic opportunity afforded by industrialization, faced many challenges upon arriving. The influx of so many immigrants changed American culture and presented unique tensions in American society. This led to a debate among native citizens over immigration, citizenship, and the restriction of immigration. Immigrants arriving during the Gilded Age included large numbers of eastern Europeans and Asians. Cartoons from the period reflect differing perspectives on the new wave of immigrants. Some welcomed these men and women as a new source of cheap labor; others viewed these newcomers with suspicion. Look carefully at the images before answering the questions. It may be helpful to zoom in on the cartoons to study the detail in each.

✒ William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” speech, 1896

Introduction

After the Civil War ended in 1865, America’s industrial capacity generated large growth for decades. The country’s industrial centers were in the Northeast and the Great Lakes region. As industry boomed, a modern financial sector grew up to supply the nation’s growing business needs. Most of these banks and commercial centers were also in the northeastern states. As a result, western and southern farmers became frustrated with their poor economic position. In addition, their access to specie (i.e., hard currency) to pay their mounting debts from poor commodity prices and high shipping costs was limited by the nation’s adherence to the gold standard. As a result, concerned farmers turned to the federal government for redress and demanded action. In 1892, these farmers supported the Populist (or People’s) Party to achieve their ends, attaining remarkable success for a third party. In the 1896 presidential campaign, Populists supported Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, a firebrand orator from Nebraska. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in 1896, Bryan delivered his most famous speech in which he decried the northern monied interests and their suppression of average Americans. In the final line, Bryan exclaimed that the American people would not allow rich industrialists to “crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” a strong condemnation of the nation’s gold standard. The speech is one of the preeminent addresses in American political history because it illustrated the social, economic, and political tensions endemic to America throughout the Gilded Age.

📝 The Annexation of Hawaii DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Ask students to describe the United States in the year 1890 to contextualize the period of the Hawaiian annexation. Students should recall that this was a period of great migration both within and to the United States, corruption in Gilded Age politics and business, rapid changes in the way people lived (urbanization) and worked (industrialization), and so forth.

II. Exploration (30-45 min)

Instruct students to read documents 1–7 and answer the questions. This can be done as best fits your teaching situation (individually, in pairs/small groups, jigsaw). They should be reading critically, focusing on the objectives of the lesson and how the documents address these issues.

III. Application (35 min)

Students will write a comparative essay addressing the following prompt:

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Collect and assess student responses using the AP rubric for the LEQ.

📝 Industry and Immigration in the Gilded Age

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

**Handout B: *Nevada* Manifest** (Students should have access to laptops.)

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

III. Application (25–30 min)

The lesson’s driving question is **How did the increase in industrialization during the period 1865–1898 fuel immigration to the United States and what was the result?**

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Summarize the inner and outer circle conversation by asking the following:

📝 Debating Industrial Progress: Andrew Carnegie vs. Henry George

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

Ask students to share the challenges (e.g., overcrowding, crime, sanitation, poverty) and opportunities (e.g., more jobs, available wealth) brought on by the Gilded Age to prepare them to examine two famous arguments on industrialization and progress.

II. Exploration (20 min)

Individually, students will read the two sources, identify the central arguments, and note the major points of each author in their graphic organizer.

III. Application (30 min)

Students will engage in a Structured Academic Controversy Activity to argue both sides of the central question.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Student will share their consensus statements and engage in a class debrief. To what extent are George’s and Carnegie’s arguments still valid today? Why or why not?

📝 Populists and Socialists in the Gilded Age

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Prior to class, write the following passages on the board or project them for the whole class to consider (omitting the source reference for each). Also, print each of the two passages (omitting the source reference for each) on an index card and, as students enter the room, enlist two student volunteers—one to read each card aloud. Encourage the volunteer students to practice delivering their passages, preparing to read each in a tone that is serious but not overly dramatic or emotional and conveys sincere concern for the future of the United States. Card A source: Populist Party Platform, 1892; Card B source: Eugene V. Debs, “Social Democracy,” *The National Magazine*, October, 1898.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

III. Application (10–25 min)

**Extensions and Additional Resources:**

📝 Debating Strategies for Change: Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

Ask students to consider the following question as a think-pair-share or large group discussion to contextualize the issues they will read about in the sources: Did Reconstruction result in progress for African Americans? Why or why not?

II. Exploration (20 min)

III. Application (30 min)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Student will share their consensus statements in engage in a class debrief. Are the arguments of Washington and Du Bois still valid today? Why or why not?

📝 Unit 5 Civics Connection: Civil Rights and Economic Freedom

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Draw a Venn diagram on the board, similar to the following:

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Civil Rights and Economic Freedom Student Packet** and assign the readings and activities to students. Assign the readings as best fits your teaching situation (e.g., small groups, jigsaw). Instruct students to discuss and annotate the assigned passages according to the directions provided on the handout, to show where and how the documents reflect constitutional principles and help them develop an answer to the **Civics Connection Unit 5 Guiding Questions:**

III. Application (10–25 min)

Depending on the method you used to have students do the initial reading and analysis, conduct a discussion that allows students to consider all the documents and share their responses to the questions in the packet. They may share their responses as a whole class, in the second stage of jigsaw groups, through inner and outer circle fishbowl discussion, and so forth.

Conduct a brief whole-class discussion of one or more of the following questions:

✏ Unit 5 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1898–1945

1898–1919

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 10 Introductory Essay: 1898–1919

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which America grew into its role as a world power
* Explain the causes and effects of international and internal migration patterns over time
* Compare the relative significance of the major events of the first half of the 20th century in shaping American identity

Introduction

By 1898, the United States had become the world’s leading industrial nation and a significant player in world affairs. It was also a nation wracked by conflicts arising from rapid industrialization, mass immigration, urbanization, and the burden of maintaining an overseas empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Industrialization led to mixed results. Increasing life expectancy, real wages, and economic growth benefitted workers, though many workers also toiled long hours in factories in dangerous and unhealthy conditions. Industrialization also brought millions of new immigrants from Eastern Europe who sought greater opportunity and filled industry’s insatiable demand for labor. The flood of tens of millions of immigrants created rapidly growing cities and stretched the ability of government and civil society to provide adequate housing and services.

Progressive Reform at the State and Local Levels

Nearly all sectors of society participated in the waves of reform that swept across the nation between 1898 and 1919. Businesses large and small aimed to tame cutthroat competition that decreased prices and profits, through either voluntary industrial associations or government regulation, though they did not always welcome government intervention. Smaller businesses sought to use government to limit the power of concentrated corporate enterprise. Liberal Protestant ministers promoted the Social Gospel, which held the promise of earthly salvation for those who worked to diminish poverty and social misery. University graduates tried to use knowledge, especially the social sciences, to reform society with efforts to alleviate poverty, overcrowding, and political corruption. Newly credentialled academics offered their knowledge as experts to serve politicians and state governments. Working people built trade unions to bargain with employers, allied themselves with political parties to enact legislative reforms, and, most radically (though in smaller numbers), joined the Socialist Party (of America). Progressivism was a divided movement whose members often acted at cross-purposes and for diverse, conflicting ends. The progressives generally sought to put their expert knowledge to use for the government to achieve their vision of a more ordered and efficient society.

Progressivism and National Politics

No figure better exemplified Progressivism on the national level than Theodore Roosevelt. Born to old wealth in New York and the beneficiary of an elite education, Roosevelt was an historian, a naturalist, a big-game hunter, and an advocate of the “strenuous life.” Unlike most men from his social circle, he chose a career in politics. As a Republican, he practiced a progressive model of government that favored civic order and social stability. He detested Populist “demagogues,” radical labor leaders, and socialists. He believed the best way to curb radicalism and class conflict was through economic and social reforms. In less than two decades, he rose from a member of the New York State Legislature, to assistant secretary of the Navy in William McKinley’s first term, to a “hero” of the Spanish-American War, to governor of New York, to McKinley’s vice president, to president after McKinley’s assassination. (See the Remember the *Maine*! Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders Narrative.)

Roosevelt and the World

Roosevelt similarly used executive power vigorously as he pursued his aims overseas. In the 1880s and 1890s, he joined other young Republicans advocating an expansive foreign policy, one that featured a navy. American businesses and politicians dreamed of opening overseas markets for the products of American farms and factories. As assistant secretary of the Navy in the McKinley administration, Roosevelt had advocated annexation of the Hawaiian Islands and war against Spain to free Cuba and expand U.S. power. He demanded the spoils of the Spanish-American War, that “splendid little war,” which ended with American control over Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Cuba. When France and Germany tried to close the Chinese market to other nations, Roosevelt endorsed the Open-Door Notes, released by Secretary of State John Hay, that beseeched European powers in China to respect the commercial rights of all nations. Ever the realist, however, Roosevelt knew there was little the United States could do to enforce its policy in China. (See the Redfield Proctor vs. Mark Twain on American Imperialism, 1898–1906 Primary Source.)

The Presidency of William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s chosen successor, became president in 1909. Taft’s greatest ambition, however, was to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a goal he achieved in the 1920s. Always more conservative than Roosevelt, Taft sided with old-guard, establishment Republicans, who controlled congressional committees precisely when a bloc of “progressive” Republicans in Congress were demanding more radical reforms to regulate Wall Street (i.e., financial markets) and concentrated corporate power. As insurgent Republicans allied with Southern Democrats, who desired lower tariffs and firmer regulation of the financial sector, Taft was damaged politically when the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff did not significantly lower rates.

The New Freedom vs. the New Nationalism

The election of 1912 created a political earthquake. Former president Roosevelt fought to regain leadership of the Republican Party, challenging Taft for the presidential nomination and campaigning on behalf of a “New Nationalism.” This platform was heavily influenced by intellectual, progressive Herbert Croly’s book *The Promise of American Life*, which supported centralization. Roosevelt demanded a more active federal government that would rapidly increase federal executive power to regulate the economy and society in the national interest. As a progressive, he believed he needed to strengthen federal power to protect the people against moneyed interests. He promoted policy ideas borrowed from the creation of the welfare states in Germany and Great Britain that sought stricter regulation of working conditions, health benefits, protection against unemployment, and security in old age. And he suggested that if the federal (or state) judiciary hampered the creation of a modern administrative state based on the Constitution, he would reform the courts.

America and a World at War

Wilson pursued a foreign policy as ambitious to expand the nation’s role in the world as Roosevelt’s had been. Where Roosevelt favored *realpolitik*, Wilson was an idealist guided by a missionary zeal to spread democracy through military intervention. He intervened in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and deployed marines to Central America. He also presided over the opening of the Panama Canal (1914). When Mexico erupted in rebellion and civil war between 1910 and 1917, Wilson decided to teach the Mexicans how to act democratically and elect the leaders he wanted. Twice he intervened militarily, first staging a naval and marine invasion at the port of Vera Cruz in 1914, and again in 1916, sending a U.S. Army detachment under the command of General John “Black Jack” Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, one of the more notorious Mexican rebels, until Pershing was recalled to fight in World War I in Europe ([link]).

The World War I Homefront

Domestically, war produced significant changes in the American economy and society, because the federal government quickly expanded to meet the progressive goal of an efficient and orderly mobilization managed by experts. The government instituted compulsory conscription and drafted millions of able-bodied men. It managed the labor supply to keep war industries adequately staffed with skilled workers. To finance the war, it raised income taxes on the wealthy, instituted a corporate “excess profits” tax, and peddled war bonds (called Liberty bonds) to ordinary citizens. It instituted a Committee on Public Information, managed by progressive George Creel, to control public opinion in support of the war through propaganda ([link]).

🔎 Ida M. Tarbell’s Crusade against Standard Oil

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Compare the goals and effects of the Progressive reform movement

🔎 Alice Paul and the Struggle for Women’s Suffrage

🔎 Remember the <i>Maine</i>! Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the effects of the Spanish–American War

🔎 Westward Expansion and the Quest to Conserve

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Compare attitudes toward the use of natural resources from 1890 to 1945

🔎 Jim Crow and Progressivism

🔎 The Panama Canal

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world

🔎 Speaker Joseph Cannon Dethroned

🔎 Wilsonian Progressivism

🔎 The Philippine-American War

🔎 America Enters World War I

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and consequences of U.S. involvement in World War I

🔎 Over There: The U.S. Soldier in World War I

🔎 The Great Migration

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of international and internal migration patterns over time

📍 The Election of 1912

📍 The Treaty of Versailles

💬 Did the Progressive Movement Diverge from Founding Principles and Did It Affect the Purpose of Government?

Issue on the Table

Was the Progressive movement fulfilling the purposes of the Founding and using the legitimate powers of the government to adapt to the new industrial age, or did it diverge from the Founding constitutionally and with the purposes, scale, and scope of government?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Progressivism arose toward the end of the nineteenth century in response to the challenges raised by the spread of industrialism and urbanism, the rise of large corporations, the closing of the frontier, and the emergence of America as a global power. Although shaped also by broader intellectual forces—within and beyond American borders—progressivism was fundamentally pragmatic. It led to new government policies that have been viewed by some critics as establishing a new interpretation of the Constitution, at odds with the purposes and presumptions of the Founders. However, progressivism was consistent and compatible with the aspirations of the Founders and the aims and purposes of the Constitution.

Claim B

The main body of the people who called themselves “progressives” rejected fundamental aspects of the political philosophy of the American Founding. To a much greater degree than any other previous political movement, progressives sought to move the country beyond its Founding principles. They attempted to modify the Constitution’s structure of government and to expand the national government’s powers far beyond the framework created by the Founders. In so doing, they sought to transform government to accomplish new goals that were never the object of the government the Founders envisioned.

✒ Redfield Proctor vs. Mark Twain on American Imperialism, 1898–1906

Introduction

When a Cuban revolutionary movement began against Spain in 1895, Americans, heavily invested in Cuba’s sugar industry, took notice. In February 1898, President William McKinley dispatched the U.S. warship *Maine* to Cuban waters. The unexplained explosion of the *Maine*, the yellow press, and accounts of Spanish atrocities in Cuba all led to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Public opinion in the United States was divided over this conflict. On March 17, 1898, Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont gave a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate concerning conditions he found in Cuba shortly after the sinking of the *Maine*. Mark Twain, the celebrated American author, commented extensively on U.S. actions overseas and became one of the most prominent members of the American Anti-Imperialist League.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: <i>A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists</i>, Victor Gillam, 1899

Introduction

The following cartoon, *A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists: Showing How Uncle Sam Had Been an Expansionist First, Last, and All the Time*, was published in 1899 in the weekly satirical magazine *Judge*. Uncle Sam is depicted at varying stages of life from infancy to old age, with dated milestones of U.S. territorial expansion listed underneath each figure. Each milestone marker lists the number of states in the United States, and the final one notes that the United States has claimed valuable interests in Cuba, Philippines, and Puerto Rico. At the far right, the arms of various European countries reach out to take Uncle Sam’s hand, with the marker reading, “And now all the nations are anxious to be on friendly terms with Uncle Sam.”

✒ Upton Sinclair, <i>The Jungle</i>, 1906

Introduction

*The Jungle* was a 1906 novel by American journalist and muckraker Upton Sinclair. As an outspoken socialist, Sinclair hoped to shed light on the harsh living and working conditions facing immigrants at the time. Before writing *The Jungle*, he spent several weeks working in the Chicago meatpacking plants featured prominently in the novel. The novel was first published serially in the socialist newspaper *Appeal to Reason* in 1905 before being published as a book in 1906. Most who read Sinclair’s work were more concerned with the health violations in the meat packing industry than with the lives of the workers. Public outcry led to reforms in federal food safety laws, such as the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and the Federal Meat Inspection Act (1906).

✒ Lewis Hine, Photographs Documenting Child Labor, 1908

Introduction

In the decades after the Civil War, drastic economic changes occurred in the United States. Technological innovations and industrialization led to a high demand for laborers in new factories, mines, and other areas. Owners increasingly hired children to work because they were cheaper to hire than adults and also were more adept at handling intricate machines with their smaller hands and bodies. In addition, compulsory education did not yet exist. Over time, child labor drew increasingly large numbers of critics who sought to reform labor laws to ban the hiring of children. Lewis Hine was a member of the National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to supporting child labor reform. He traveled the country in the early twentieth century to photograph children and show the public the conditions they experienced.

✒ Elihu Root vs. William Jennings Bryan on Women’s Suffrage, 1894–1914

Introduction

During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, suffragists pressed for the United States to follow through on the assertions expressed in the Declaration of Independence (“that all men are created equal”) and then in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (“that all men and women are created equal”). By 1900, women had achieved suffrage in only six states or territories. In the next two decades, as progressivism gained momentum, women struggled to increase social, economic, and educational opportunities. The debate over women’s suffrage continued, however, as supporters advocated the principles of equality and government by consent and opponents sought to protect the traditional gender-determined spheres of activity and what they believed was the divine right and responsibility of men to protect women.

✒ Carrie Chapman Catt, Open Address to the U.S. Congress, 1917

Introduction

Carrie Chapman Catt grew up in Charles City, Iowa, and graduated from Iowa State College in 1880, the only woman in her class. Before emerging as a leader of the women’s suffrage movement, Catt worked as a teacher, principal, and school superintendent. She joined the Iowa Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1886 and quickly rose through the ranks to hold multiple leadership positions. Her reputation as a speaker grew and, in 1892, Susan B. Anthony asked her to testify before Congress regarding a proposed constitutional amendment that would grant women the vote. By 1900, Catt had been elected to succeed Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1916, Catt announced a new strategy for the NAWSA, called the Winning Plan. The ultimate goal of this plan was an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it also encouraged state and local initiatives to secure equal voting rights. Catt traveled the country and met with national leaders in support of her plan. The following letter, written in November 1917, was addressed to members of Congress. Catt never addressed Congress directly but delivered the letter as a speech on several occasions during speaking tours in 1917–1918.

✒ Business and Advertising in the Early Twentieth Century, 1910–1917

Introduction

Industrialization and mass production drastically reduced the costs of goods, and many Americans were able to buy products that the previous generation would not have been able to afford. Sellers no longer waited passively for customers to come into their stores; instead, they used a variety of techniques to attract attention to their wares. Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, large businesses increasingly turned to advertisements to persuade consumers that their product ought to be purchased.

✒ The Espionage Act of 1917

Introduction

On April 6, 1917, Congress officially declared war against Germany for “repeated acts of war against the people of the United States of America.” However, some AmericansAespecially socialists, anarchists, and those with strong connections to GermanyGopposed the conflict. Antiwar groups encouraged workers not to support the war effort and encouraged men to resist the draft. President Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Congress feared these efforts threatened the full mobilization of resources and manpower for fighting the war; therefore, they passed the Espionage Act in June 1917.

✒ George M. Cohan, <i>Over There</i>, 1917

Introduction

World War I propaganda did not always appear in the form of posters encouraging citizens to do their part for the effort. In fact, the Great War spawned one of the most famous patriotic tunes in the history of the United States, *Over There*. Written by George M. Cohan immediately after Congress declared war against Germany, *Over There* was performed by a variety of groups in the United States. Its lyrics encouraged men to join the military and defeat the Germans.

✒ Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 1918

Introduction

President Woodrow Wilson wrote the Fourteen Points as a program to preserve peace after World War I. Wilson first presented the Fourteen Points in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, in what would be the final year of the war. Wilson hoped the end of the war would be an opportunity to not only establish a peace treaty but also create a just and cooperative international order to prevent future wars in Europe and the rest of the world. American allies viewed the Fourteen Points positively and even the Central Powers began to see it as a reasonable basis for peace when they realized the war was unwinnable. Although all sides initially supported the ideas presented in the Fourteen Points, demands for German reparations and other punishments made the idealism of the Fourteen Points difficult to implement at the Peace of Paris.

📝 Women's Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Distribute **Handout A** and allow students approximately five minutes to interpret the two political cartoons to determine if they are in favor of or opposed to women’s suffrage. Note that with its higher concentration of visual symbolism and smaller amount of text, *The Age of Brass: Or the Triumphs of Woman’s Rights* may be more challenging than *I Wonder if It’s Really Becoming?* Students should note that *The Age of Brass* was (probably) the earlier of the two cartoons. *I Wonder if It’s Really Becoming?* is listed in some sources as having been published in 1891, but the Library of Congress does not include that information, showing “n.d.” for “no date.” Discuss answers and transition students to the background essay, which will provide more detailed information about the suffrage movement in this period.

II. Exploration (30 min)

a. Assign the background essay to students, instructing them to annotate the essay’s main ideas and to answer the questions at the end. Assign the readings as best fits your teaching situation (small groups, jigsaw, and so forth). After students have read the essay, use a few of the questions to check for understanding.

III. Application (20 min)

b. Have students work in groups of two or three and distribute one of the laminated images to each group with these instructions written on the board: Without referring to **Handout A**, work with your small group to identify the subject and approximate date of your image. Evaluate the significance of the person or event in the women’s suffrage movement. (At this point, depending on your discretion and student background, you might allow students to use the essay to check their accuracy.)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

a. Instruct each small group to affix their caption to the image they analyzed. Then, have them use their images with captions to form an image timeline along the classroom wall(s). (A “U”-shaped timeline will enable everyone to see all the images.) Have each small group explain the significance of their person or event to the class in chronological order.

📝 The Progressive Movement DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

a. Have students count off 1 to 4. Assign students the following roles:

II. Exploration and Application (60 min)

Have students read and complete the questions in the student document packet.

III. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Have each student write a thesis statement to the DBQ prompt: To what extent did the progressives diverge from the Founding in terms of the purposes, scale, and scope of government?

📝 <i> Schenck v. United States</i>  DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Lead a brief discussion to analyze the First Amendment’s free speech protections. See **Handout: Student Document Packet**.

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

a. Distribute the document packet for the lesson, instructing students to work through only Documents A–H. They should not proceed to Document I, the Supreme Court opinion in *Schenck v. the United States*, until the Application class discussion. Have students work individually, with a partner, or in small groups to read each source in sequence and answer the accompanying questions.

III. Application (10–25 min)

b. After students have worked through Documents A–H, invite students to come back together to synthesize the content by leading a class discussion on the following reflective questions. Students may respond orally to each question or write their responses to each question, as best fits your classroom needs.

Have students read Document I, Supreme Court Opinion in the Schenck case, and identify the sentence that best conveys the Court’s reasoning. Ask students to vote on whether the Supreme Court got it right or wrong.

✏ Unit 6 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1920–1932

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 11 Introductory Essay: 1920–1932

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Unit 7A Explain the context in which America grew into its role as a world power
* Unit 7J Explain the causes of the Great Depression and its effects on the economy
* Unit 7O Compare the relative significance of the major events of the first half of the 20th century in shaping American identity

Introduction

World War I signaled great changes in the modern world. The conflict’s introduction of total warfare mobilized the industrial economies of the great powers and left 8.5 million soldiers dead, 21 million wounded, and 7.5 million missing or captured. The combined debts of the combatant nations totaled \$232 billion. Four empires—Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and German—had collapsed, inspiring their subject people from Asia to the Caribbean to demand independence. In Russia, a communist-led coup by Vladimir Lenin enabled him to seize power; he negotiated a separate peace with Germany and vowed to spread revolution throughout the world. By 1920, a deadly influenza epidemic, likely spread by the movement of troops, had killed another 22 million people, including 675,000 in the United States. The almost wholesale destruction of an entire generation of young men led many to question old assumptions and traditional truths. The Versailles Treaty failed to establish a just and sound peace, sowing the seeds for future conflict, as many contemporaries noted. The United States could not escape the consequences of victory, peace, and demobilization in 1919–1920. (See The Spanish Flu of 1919 Narrative.)

The Treaty of Versailles

On January 22, 1917, three years into a raging European war the United States had not yet entered, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress and offered to mediate the conflict to produce a “peace without victory.” Three months later, he instead asked Congress to declare war on Germany in the wake of the latter’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. Wilson thereby placed himself and the country in the untenable position of both belligerent and mediator and turned U.S. entry into the war into an idealistic crusade to “make the world safe for democracy.” As Wilson said in his war speech to Congress: “We shall fight . . . for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free” ([link]).

Postwar American Society

The nation to which Wilson returned after six months of negotiations abroad had itself fallen into class and racial conflict that turned 1919 into one of the most violent years in the nation’s twentieth century. In late July, a white man tossing rocks at African American teenagers who ventured onto a segregated white beach triggered a race riot in Chicago that lasted 13 days, leaving 38 dead and 537 injured before troops restored a semblance of order. Chicago’s riot became only the first of 25 other racial conflagrations that claimed 120 victims as whites rampaged through new African American neighborhoods and returning black soldiers took up arms to defend their homes. African Americans who had moved north with the Great Migration discovered that racism was widespread in the cities of that region. (See the Postwar Race Riots Narrative.)

Sociocultural Conflict and Debate over Modernization

In addition to exacerbating racial and class tensions and restricting civil liberties, the war and its immediate aftermath also led to several movements inspired by great anxiety over modernization. Industrialization, immigration, and urbanization had wrought significant changes in the American economy, society, and culture. Deep divides resulted as some people embraced or adapted to modernism and others revolted against it. The 1920 federal census indicated that, for the first time, more Americans lived in metropolitan areas than in small towns and villages, but the cultural debates were less about city versus country and more about the debate over modernization.

African Americans

In a postwar America dominated by strident nationalism, racial chauvinism, and fear of foreigners, African Americans were the most oppressed minority group and responded in a variety of ways. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) arose, headed by Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey, who advocated black pride and racial purity and railed against the integrationist ideology of other black organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its leader W. E. B. De Bois. (See the Marcus Garvey, “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” 1920 Primary Source.)

The Lost Generation

Many American writers were part of the Lost Generation of artists and filled with despair in the wake of World War I and its devastating impact on civilization. Writer Gertrude Stein coined the phrase “the lost generation” to describe the intellectuals among whom malaise and disaffection had set in.

Postwar Politics

In November 1920, fed up with high wartime taxation, disillusioned with Wilson’s peacemaking efforts, and shaken by racial violence and widespread strikes, American voters deserted the Democratic Party and returned Republicans to the White House and Congress. Warren Harding won by the largest popular vote to date, with a margin of seven million votes and a decisive electoral college tally of 404 to 127 over Democrat James Cox. The GOP continued this dominance of the presidency, Congress, and the federal courts until 1930, presiding over the greatest economic boom in the nation’s history. The policies of the 1920s were not a sharp break with Progressivism or the end of reform. Rather, they were rooted in the progressive ideal of business-government cooperation for order and the efficiency of the Progressive Era and World War I, which continued into the 1920s and laid the foundation for the New Deal.

The Consumer Economy

Despite the social and cultural turmoil of the years after 1920 and clashes over race, class, religion, and many public issues, the American people enjoyed almost a decade of unsurpassed prosperity, the beginning of a new consumer-oriented economy. Although not all participated equally, such as farmers and workers in aging industries such as coal, many luxuriated in the wealth of the richest society on earth.

The Great Crash and the Great Depression

From 1927 to 1929, banks and corporations loaded \$7.6 billion into the stock market to encourage the buying of shares on credit and to foster the belief that continued increases in common stock values had become inevitable. Shares of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), for example, soared from \$85 to \$420 without the company paying investors a single dividend. Wright Aircraft stock increased \$220 per share in 19 months, and shares of the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain jumped \$52 in one day of trading. The reckoning came at the end of October 1929, when company earnings faltered and panic about their stock values set in. Investors sold off six million shares on October 21, another 12.9 million on October 24, “Black Thursday,” and yet another 16.6 million on October 29, “Black Tuesday.” Even blue chip stocks like AT&T, General Electric, and Standard Oil lost half their value. Crafty investors were wiped out in the Great Crash. The banking system, the heart of the nation’s credit network, stopped functioning. America entered the longest economic decline so far in its history ([link]). (See The Crash of 1929 Narrative.)

President Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression

Herbert Hoover won the presidency in 1928 when he defeated Democrat Al Smith, who represented the solid South and the ethnic enclaves of the Northeast. He thus had the misfortunate of occupying the White House during the 1929 stock market crash and the resulting economic collapse. Hoover was severely criticized for appearing to do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the American people caused by the economic crisis. People called the camps of cardboard hovels in which the homeless lived “Hoovervilles,” empty pockets were “Hoover flags,” and newspapers stuffed in clothing to keep warm were “Hoover blankets.”

🔎 The Red Scare and Civil Liberties

🔎 Postwar Race Riots

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of developments in popular culture in the United States over time

🔎 The Spanish Flu of 1919

🔎 U.S. Foreign Policy between the Wars

🔎 The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s

🔎 Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan: Industrialization and Competition

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the innovations in communication and technology in the United States over time

🔎 “Silent Cal” Coolidge

🔎 The Scopes Trial

🔎 Charles Lindbergh and Flight

🔎 The Crash of 1929

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes of the Great Depression and its effects on the economy

📍 The Bonus Army

💬 Was Prohibition a Success or a Failure?

Issue on the Table

Was prohibition a successful experiment that lowered the amount of alcohol consumed per capita and whose reputation for causing organized crime is greatly exaggerated by popular culture? Or was it a dramatic short-term failure whose regulations were largely evaded, contributed to the rise of organized crime, and failed to stop alcohol consumption in the United States?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution in 1933 repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and ended the federal government’s 14-year quest to prohibit the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition had become increasingly unpopular after 1925 and even more so with the onset of the Great Depression after 1929. In their effort to undermine support for the “noble experiment,” prohibition’s opponents created two widely accepted myths. One was that prohibition had failed utterly to reduce levels of drinking. The second was that by encouraging bootlegging and an illegal liquor trade, prohibition had incited the creation of organized criminal gangs led by notorious bosses such as Al Capone. These gangs, critics charged, were responsible for a rise in deadly violence such as Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929.

Claim B

Prohibition briefly displaced America’s traditionally decentralized oversight of alcohol consumption by combining nineteenth-century temperance moralism with twentieth-century progressive government regulation. Although prohibition did decrease the amount of alcohol Americans consumed, it failed utterly to stop that consumption. In the attempt, prohibition brought a train of consequences that quickly revealed it as a mistake that should be reversed. One clear measure of prohibition’s failure is that the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified on January 19, 1919) remains the only amendment to have ever been repealed, which occurred when the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933—a mere 14 years later.

💬 Should Herbert Hoover Be Considered an Activist President?

Issue on the Table

Was Herbert Hoover a conservative president whose policies of individualism shaped his response to the Great Depression? Or was he an activist president who introduced unprecedented government intervention during the Great Depression?

Instructions

Claim A

In recent decades, few American presidents have enjoyed as much of a reevaluation by historians as Herbert Hoover. For a long time, President Hoover was seen as a do-nothing president by historians, particularly those favorable to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. However, many historians now understand him to be more of a progressive than previously thought. They argue he was a president who used an activist government to combat the Great Depression.

Claim B

Few American presidents arose from more humble circumstances than Herbert Clark Hoover. Few entered the White House with a more sterling resume of public service; few left under a darker cloud of opprobrium. Contemporary and later critics often blamed him for the Great Depression or for prolonging its accumulated miseries. Taciturn, often humorless, Hoover also suffered in comparison with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the ebullient, debonair president who succeeded him in 1933, although the economy itself did not fully recover until after mobilizing millions of men for the war effort in the early 1940s.

✒ Cartoon Analysis: Elmer Andrews Bushnell, “The Sky Is Now Her Limit,” 1920

Introduction

In 1848, 100 men and women of the 300 attendees at the Seneca Falls Convention signed a document proclaiming certain truths to be self-evident: “that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. . . ” The ninth resolution in this document, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, demanded the right to vote for women. However, it took another 72 years of determined struggle for the guarantee of women’s suffrage to be added to the U.S. Constitution with the Nineteenth Amendment, adopted on August 26, 1920. In her speech upon the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt stated: “The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guaranty of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. . . Women have suffered agony of soul which you never can comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it! The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. . . Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!”

✒ Mitchell Palmer, “The Case against the Reds,” 1920

Introduction

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters successfully overthrew the Russian tsar and established a communist regime. The Bolsheviks called for a world revolution in which workers would rise up and overthrow capitalist governments. In 1919, the Socialist Party in the United States split apart, with its radical members leaving to form the Communist Labor Party and the Communist Party of the USA. Although small (their combined membership was perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 members), the two parties launched aggressive campaigns to win workers to radical causes. That same year, a series of postwar labor strikes, race riots, and bombings by anarchist groups led to a fury that became the country’s first Red Scare. Members of the Wilson administration saw the strikes, riots, and bombings as the work of a Bolshevik-inspired campaign. Fearful of the growing appeal of these ideals in the United States, the Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, seized the offensive in late 1919. The so-called Palmer Raids led to the detaining of nearly 10,000 people and the arrest of 4,000 without due process of law. In this 1920 essay, Palmer defended his actions and explained why the threat of Bolshevism required extreme measures

✒ Marcus Garvey, “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” 1920

Introduction

Despite the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, at the beginning of the twentieth century, many African Americans still experienced widespread discrimination, especially in the South. Leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought for recognition of and respect for African Americans’ rights in the hope that blacks could be accepted within white society. However, some civil rights leaders like Marcus Garvey did not want blacks to live with whites. As a black nationalist, Garvey instead argued that African Americans should emigrate to the continent of their ancestors. He formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote his “Back to Africa” message. In 1920, he and 25,000 UNIA delegates convened to write the following declaration.

✒ Charlie Chaplin, <i>The Kid</i>, 1921

Introduction

In the nineteenth century, traveling shows and circuses entertained Americans. Troops of performers crisscrossed the nation regularly, bringing a variety of diversions such as singers, comedians, jugglers, dancers, animal acts, acrobats, and plays. As the technology of cameras, film, and projection progressed in the late nineteenth century, the “motion picture” was born, with the first silent film shown to a paying audience in Paris, France, in December 1895. “Silent films” were accompanied by live sound effects and in-house music, typically a piano or organ. Title cards occasionally interrupted a film’s ongoing action to provide brief bits of dialogue or to explain events. For a few cents, even those with little money to spare could escape via this new form of entertainment. As the popularity of motion pictures increased, film stars like Charlie Chaplin gained international fame. As the movie industry grew, its impact on culture did as well. Actors became more important as fans began to follow not only the careers of favorite performers like Chaplin but also their daily lives. Movie stars were part of the new star culture and mass consumerism as Americans idolized screen personalities.

✒ Alice Paul and the Equal Rights Amendment (Lucretia Mott Amendment), 1923

Introduction

While women across the United States gained the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, many feminists believed the fight for equal gender rights was just beginning. Alice Paul, the leader of the National Woman’s Party, immediately began to lobby for an addition to the Constitution that would provide for the protection of women’s rights in general. Beginning in 1923, Paul and her supporters submitted the Lucretia Mott Amendment to Congress yearly until 1942. In 1943, Paul reworded the amendment, which became known as the Alice Paul Amendment. Paul continued to submit it to Congress every year. In 1972, the U.S. Congress rewrote the amendment once again and passed it. The amendment, now known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), then went to the state legislatures to acquire ratification. The ERA failed to be ratified—only 37 of the necessary 38 state legislatures voted to pass the amendment within the seven-year deadline.

✒ Ellison DuRant Smith, “Shut the Door,” 1924

Introduction

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, floods of hopeful immigrants arrived at the shores of the United States. While groups from western and northern Europe such as the Irish and Germans continued to emigrate to the United States as they had during the 1800s, new groups of people from southern and eastern Europe began to arrive in large numbers. Some Americans feared that this influx of immigrants would take jobs, bring violent ideologies like anarchism and communism, and fail to assimilate into American culture. These fears continued to grow after World War I, leading to efforts to limit the number of immigrants who could move to the United States. South Carolina senator Ellison Smith gave the following speech in support of the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely restricted the number of immigrants that could enter the United States each year, especially from southern and eastern Europe.

✒ Langston Hughes, “I, Too” and “The Weary Blues,” 1920 and 1925

Introduction

Poverty and violence spurred many African Americans to leave the South in the early twentieth century. In the North, African Americans still faced discrimination, but many found industrial jobs and some improvement in their standard of living. In the 1920s, vibrant African American neighborhoods grew up in cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and, particularly, the Harlem area of New York City. As Harlem’s population swelled to 200,000 by 1930, an intellectual and artistic explosion there became known as the Harlem Renaissance. One of the most well-known writers of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes was a poet, novelist, and playwright known for his depictions of African American life. Hughes was the first to use jazz dialect and rhythms in his work, and his poems were addressed to and captured the experiences of his people. Hughes began writing poetry in high school and published his first book of poetry, *The Weary Blues*, in 1926 at the age of 24 years.

✒ Andy Razaf (lyrics), Thomas “Fats” Waller and Harry Brooks (score), “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” Jazz and the Radio, 1929

Introduction

Among the many inventions that began to be mass produced during the 1920s, the radio was one the most influential. The rise of mass media in American society affected the nation in a variety of ways. Businesses could advertise their products to a wider audience, communication across the nation became easier, and Americans had access to a new form of entertainment. In the 1920s, families could gather around the radio to listen to plays, quiz games, various types of live and recorded music, comedy shows, sports, news broadcasts, and more. The radio also helped popularize jazz music. Jazz had its origins in the ragtime and blues styles that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Jazz drew on the musical traditions of formerly enslaved men and women and its roots were cultivated in the African American community in New Orleans. Jazz musicians traveled north to perform in clubs and exposed a wider audience to jazz, but the radio brought jazz music into any American home that wanted to listen.

📝 Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Students will examine the first document in Handout A to examine the costs of World War I among the allies. They will complete the comprehension and reflection questions, then share and compare their conclusions with a partner.

II. Exploration (40 min)

Students will study the remaining three documents in Handout A and complete the comprehension questions.

III. Application (30 min)

Each student will compose a reflection essay on themes in the literature of Ernest Hemingway, and how his work helps us understand the impact of World War I on the worldview of the “lost generation.” In their essay, students must cite and quote all the sources provided.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

The teacher will lead a class discussion addressing the themes from the reflections. Students will be called on to cite passages they identified in their essays on each theme.

📝 The KKK during Reconstruction vs. the KKK in the 1920s

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Image Analysis**. Have students examine the two images and answer the questions that follow. Ask students to think about what these images reveal about the changing dynamics of the KKK over time in U.S. history. What additional information do they need to answer this question?

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Have students read and annotate the two essays discussing the KKK at two key points in U.S. history—during Reconstruction (The Ku Klux Klan and Violence at the Polls Narrative) and in the 1920s (The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s Narrative). Option: Have students complete the Reading Questions to ensure their understanding of the main ideas. You may also choose to have students complete the AP-style questions associated with each essay for extra practice.

III. Application (35 min)

Distribute **Handout B: Long Essay Prompt**. Allow students 35 minutes to write a comparative essay that addresses the following prompt:

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–10 min)

Collect student essays for a grade, or have students self- or peer-review against the AP LEQ Rubric, as best fits your teaching situation.

📝 The Blues and the Great Migration

✏ Unit 6 Essay Activity

Warm-Up

Exploration

Application

Conclusion

1932–1945

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖  Chapter 12 Introductory Essay: 1932–1945

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which America grew into its role as a world power
* Explain the causes of the Great Depression and its effects on the economy
* Explain how the Great Depression and the New Deal impacted American political, social, and economic life over time
* Explain how and why U.S. participation in World War II transformed American society
* Compare the relative significance of the major events of the first half of the 20th century in shaping American identity

Introduction

On Saturday, March 4, 1933, newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the nation “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” ([link]) (see the Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 Primary Source). However, the economic collapse called the Great Depression meant the American people had every reason to be fearful. On the morning Roosevelt took office, the governors of New York and Illinois had closed the great financial centers of New York City and Chicago, the culmination of six weeks during which state after state had closed its banks to halt the runs as desperate customers lined up to withdraw their money. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen by one-third since 1929. Between one-quarter and one-third of the industrial work force was out of a job, and many of the rest were working only part-time. Agriculture, which employed one-third of the nation’s workforce, was stricken. World commodity prices had collapsed, and cotton and wheat farmers found themselves with huge surpluses that sold well below the cost of production, if at all. In some areas, conversely, drought had destroyed what crops there were (see the The Dust Bowl Narrative). Everywhere, indebted farmers lost their farms when they could not pay their taxes or repay mortgages. In the cities, 1,000 homeowners a day were losing their homes.

From Hoover to Roosevelt

To this economic calamity, still the worst in the nation’s history, government had had little effective response. President Herbert Hoover was an activist executive with a deserved reputation as a humanitarian for his earlier efforts to alleviate hunger in war-torn Europe. He worked tirelessly to persuade businesses to maintain employment levels, to cajole private citizens to provide relief for the unemployed, to encourage farmers to control their production, and to renegotiate their loans and debts with other nations. But these appeals to voluntarism failed, and the downturn continued remorselessly. Hoover increasingly pinned his faith on a balanced budget as a precondition of securing international stabilization.

The New Deal and the Hundred Days

Roosevelt and his advisers had no plans to deal with the collapse of the banking system, which was the most immediate and pressing problem they faced. Relying on suggestions from holdover officials of the outgoing Hoover administration, Roosevelt shut the remaining banks and called Congress into special session. On its first day, Congress passed a bill for the phased reopening of the banks. Still, Roosevelt was taking a tremendous gamble. He used the medium of the radio to speak to the American people on Sunday, March 12, 1933, explaining the legislation and appealing for confidence when the banks reopened the next day. The pause calmed people’s fears, and when the banks reopened, customers deposited more than they took out.

Critics of the New Deal

Roosevelt was nevertheless assailed by critics on both sides. Conservatives railed against the unprecedented increase in government spending and power, and radicals criticized the president for not doing enough to combat the lingering depression (see the New Deal Critics Narrative).

The Second New Deal

In late 1934, the president delivered one of his so-called fireside chats, using the radio to speak directly to the American people and fostering an intimacy that reassured them that he understood their problems and was working to solve them. He also explained his rationale for the New Deal and the changing purpose of government: “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

Third New Deal

The New Deal’s reforms, jobs programs, and relief measures cemented lower-income voters’ loyalty to the Democratic Party for a generation. By 1936, the popularity of these initiatives had helped Roosevelt and the Democrats forge a new coalition that gave evidence of a realignment in national politics. The New Deal coalition included urban ethnic voters and party bosses, southern Democrats, organized labor, African Americans, Catholics, and Jews, leading to the triumph of modern liberalism from the middle of the twentieth century through the 1960s. However, Roosevelt’s greatest victory, deriving from the strength of this coalition, also contributed to the decline of the New Deal.

The New Deal and Minorities

Many white southern politicians feared New Deal interference in segregation in the 1930s. The New Deal did not challenge segregation or the disfranchisement of African Americans. In fact, it discriminated against African Americans in the administration of its programs through outright exclusion and lower wages and by leaving the distribution of funds in the hands of state and local officials who favored segregation. Moreover, Roosevelt refused to support the demands of African Americans, despite the lobbying of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for an antilynching bill, because he feared the political consequences of offending powerful southern committee chairs in Congress.

Isolationism in the 1930s

Roosevelt’s initial focus was on the domestic economy, but foreign affairs demanded his attention with the rise of authoritarian and expansionist governments in Europe and Asia. Only a few weeks after he took office in 1933, an Enabling Act in Germany gave the decrees of the new chancellor Adolf Hitler ([link]) the force of law and ended any pretense of parliamentary democracy. Scornful of the ineffective western democracies and fueled by a desire to expand Germany’s borders, Hitler broke the Versailles Treaty and launched a massive re-armament program. He marched into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, effectively annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, invaded Poland in 1939, and conquered most of continental Europe in 1940 before attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. Meanwhile, in the Far East, an increasingly authoritarian, militaristic Japan invaded Manchuria and China and clearly intended to exercise complete economic and military control of East Asia.

The Neutrality Acts

In the United States, disillusionment with earlier American involvement in World War I was strong. In 1934, congressional hearings by the investigating Nye Committee had blamed American entry into the war on domestic bankers and arms manufacturers who were financially dependent on an Allied victory. The determination not to be entangled in future European conflicts led to increasingly rigorous neutrality legislation in the 1930s and the scaling back of America’s military might. Americans generally supported a policy of nonintervention that kept the nation out of foreign wars and focused on events at home.

The United States in World War II

In 1942, the American Navy fought two crucial battles at the Coral Sea and Midway that halted an apparently unstoppable Japanese drive through Southeast Asia and the Pacific. American industrial might was sufficient to replace the nation’s lost planes and ships, but the Japanese could not do the same. An island-hopping campaign by U.S. Marines between 1942 and 1945 gradually established the bases needed for a relentless bombing of the Japanese home islands (see the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima Narrative). Finally, the United States’ dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 forced the Japanese to surrender ([link]) (see the Dropping the Atomic Bomb Decision Point)

On the American Home Front in World War II

The federal government used precedents from World War I to mobilize millions of workers to produce supplies for the war and to draft millions of soldiers for the armed forces. Executive agencies were again created to rationalize the war effort and manage the American economy and society. The Office of War Information managed popular opinion through propaganda posters and films such as the *Why We Fight* series (see the World War II Propaganda Posters, 1941–1945 Primary Source). The War Production Board, Office of War Mobilization, and National Resources Planning Board helped manage war production. The National War Labor Board helped negotiate labor-management relations.

🔎 The Dust Bowl

🔎 The National Recovery Administration and the Schechter Brothers

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how the Great Depression and the New Deal impacted American political, social, and economic life over time

🔎 New Deal Critics

🔎 Labor Upheaval, Industrial Organization, and the Rise of the CIO

🔎 Court Packing and Constitutional Revolution

🔎 Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson

🔎 Foreign Policy in the 1930s: From Neutrality to Involvement

🔎 Pearl Harbor

🔎 Double V for Victory: The Effort to Integrate the U.S. Military

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the victory of the United States and its allies over the Axis Powers

🔎 D-Day

🔎 Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

🔎 The Manhattan Project

📍 Dropping the Atomic Bomb

💬 Did the New Deal End the Great Depression?

Issue on the Table

Did New Deal spending and programs succeed in restoring American capitalism during the Great Depression and should the government have spent more money to help the New Deal succeed, or did the New Deal spend unprecedented amounts of money on relief and recovery efforts but ultimately fail to stimulate a full economic recovery?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, America was in the midst of financial collapse. Banking holidays closed banks in 28 states, and investors traded their dollars for gold to have tangible wealth. The president reassured Americans, “This great Nation will endure as it has endured and will revive and will prosper.” He listed three goals to shore up capitalism through his New Deal: banking regulation, laws to curb speculation, and the establishment of a sound currency basis. Roosevelt shored up the financial sector through regulation to restore the public trust that mismanaged banks and financial speculators had destroyed. His New Deal gave the federal government regulatory responsibility to smooth economic downturns. Over the next eight years, the New Deal’s economic practices and spending helped create recovery and restore capitalism.

Claim B

In the spring of 1934, encouraged by Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter, President Roosevelt sat down in the White House for a chat with British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes had initially risen to celebrity after World War I with a devastating critique of the Versailles Treaty. In 1936, he would publish his *General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money*, the most influential work of economic analysis since Adam Smith’s *An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations* (1776). In the *General Theory*, with wit, bravado, and mind-numbing equations, Keynes sought to demolish the core assumptions of classical economics, which maintained a belief in a rational free market where supply and demand remained always self-correcting.

✒ Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

Introduction

When the newly elected president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressed the nation on his first inauguration day, March 4, 1933, the economic collapse of the Great Depression had left many Americans afraid. About one-fourth of the industrial work force was out of a job, and many of the rest were working only part-time or for lower wages. Agriculture, which employed one-third of the nation’s work force, was stricken. Cotton and wheat farmers found themselves with huge surpluses that sold well below the cost of production. Other farmers were plagued by drought that destroyed crops. Everywhere, indebted farmers lost their farms when they could not pay their taxes or repay mortgages. In the cities, 1,000 homeowners a day were losing their homes. Despite the efforts of Roosevelt’s predecessor, President Hoover, many Americans blamed him for the crisis. Roosevelt had promised a “new deal for the American people” when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1932. He pledged to act and experiment with the economy but was short on details. On his inauguration day, he spoke to the American people about how he planned to address the crisis. His first inaugural address was broadcast nationwide on several radio stations, allowing millions of Americans to listen to their new president’s vision for the country.

✒ Art Analysis: The Art of the New Deal, 1934

Introduction

One of the goals of the New Deal was to put as many unemployed Americans back to work as quickly as possible. Before the well-known Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 to create jobs, a smaller, less-ambitious program called the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was developed in 1934. PWAP hired thousands of unemployed artists to create paintings, murals, and crafts for government and public buildings. The government suggested these designers depict American life in their works.

✒ Huey Long and the American Liberty League, 1934

Introduction

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies faced only minor opposition during the so-called first 100 days of his presidency in 1933. However, as the Great Depression continued to take its tolltand especially given the increasing unemployment raterhis near-unanimous support began to crumble in 1934. A group of conservative Democrats, Republicans, and business leaders who believed that certain aspects of the New Deal were an unconstitutional overreach by the federal government formed the American Liberty League in 1934. They penned a pamphlet in that year outlining their ideology of limited government and individual liberties.

✒ Photographs: The Dust Bowl and Rural Poverty, 1936–1937

Introduction

The 1930s was not only a time of economic downturns resulting from the Great Depression, it was also one of ecological disaster in the Great Plains. Over previous decades, farmers had tilled the prairie grass, which served as an anchor for the soil beneath it as well as a moisture trapper. Without grass providing water and protection, this soil turned to dust. The high-velocity winds in the area then blew the dust away in giant “storms” that devastated communities and made farming nearly impossible. These conditions affected residents in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico the worst, but its impact stretched all the way north to the Dakotas. The Dust Bowl, as this phenomenon came to be called, exacerbated the poverty conditions many already experienced as a result of the Great Depression and also sparked a mass migration out of the most severely affected regions. Many photographs were taken during this time to show the public the conditions in the Dust Bowl.

✒ “Sit Down,” Maurice Sugar, 1936–1937

Introduction

In the 1920s, the flourishing automobile industry brought prosperity to Detroit, Michigan. With the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, car sales collapsed, and production plummeted. The depression forced General Motors and other car companies to lay off many of their workers in Detroit.

✒ The Atlantic Charter, 1941

Introduction

World War II effectively began in Europe in September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, leading to France and Britain declaring war on Germany. However, Hitler rapidly partitioned Poland with the Soviet Union. With his eastern borders safe, he then successfully invaded France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands in May 1940, leaving Britain alone against the German war machine. Desperate for an ally, Britain began pressing the United States for assistance. In the summer of 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with President Franklin Roosevelt aboard a warship off the coast of Canada. Churchill hoped to convince the United States to join the war. Roosevelt refused to discuss this, but the two leaders did jointly release the Atlantic Charter. This agreement was not a treaty but a declaration of solidarity between the United States and Great Britain.

✒ A. Philip Randolph, The Call to Negro America to March on Washington, 1941

Introduction

In the minds of many Americans, World War II was a battle between the Allied forces of democracy and liberty against Nazi, Japanese, and Italian fascism, tyranny, and oppression. This conception of an ideological war helped boost the morale of many American citizens who believed they were fighting for the freedom of the world. However, many African Americans in the United States found it difficult to support the liberation of Europe and the Pacific when they were treated as second-class citizens at home. African Americans routinely experienced discrimination in their daily lives, including when they tried to find work at munitions factories. In addition, government agencies, including the military, were strictly segregated.

✒ World War II Propaganda Posters, 1941–1945

Introduction

World War II presented an existential threat to the United States in many ways. Thus, the country mobilized its resources and citizens on an unprecedented scale to meet the industrial and manpower demands of war. However, the war effort did not just involve physical entities like guns, planes, and soldiers. The U.S. government was very aware of the psychological burdens of war and recruited leading artists and filmmakers to create propaganda to influence the public and motivate Americans to support the war.

✒ Photographs: Women at Work on the Homefront during World War II, 1941–1945

Introduction

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. The United States had already been using its industrial might to be the “arsenal of democracy” by sending equipment and munitions to nations fighting the Axis powers. However, the nation would now need to continue to produce enough war supplies for its allies as well as itself. In addition, millions of men left their work at factories, mines, shipyards, and other industries to join the military. The many job openings provided an opportunity unprecedented in U.S. history for women to find work outside of their home. Many women wanted to work or were already working at low-paying jobs and wanted higher wages.

✒ Franklin Roosevelt, Second Bill of Rights, 1944

Introduction

President Franklin Roosevelt used calm and inspiring communication with American citizens through fireside chats and his State of the Union addresses. His communication style established firebreaks in the panic that followed in the wake of the Great Depression and harnessed the needed courage to respond to the 1941 military attack against Pearl Harbor. Three years into the war, Roosevelt chose to reassert the necessity of winning the economic war on poverty at home just as fascism had to be conquered in Europe. To accomplish this, the president wielded the political clout and trust he had developed with Americans to propose a Second Bill of Rights in his 1944 State of the Union address.

✒ Dwight Eisenhower, D-Day Statement, 1944

Introduction

From the moment the United States entered World War II, it began to plan how to invade the European continent to strike at the heart of the Nazi war machine. Although the Allies successfully landed in Sicily and moved up the boot of Italy in the summer and fall of 1943, leaders knew that a landing in France would eventually be necessary to reach Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower was named commander of an Allied expeditionary force and spent almost a year planning a landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, known as Operation Overlord. On June 6, 1944, the day of the invasion, Eisenhower gave his order of the day to all of the troops under his command.

✒ Phil “Bo” Perabo, Letter Home, 1945

Introduction

During World War II, approximately 27,000 American soldiers were held in Japanese prison camps. Despite being out of combat, hardships and life-or-death struggles would continue for these men. The Japanese violated many international laws in combat and in their treatment of captives. Allied prisoners of war were routinely executed, tortured, and forced into labor as slaves. Although only 1 percent of American prisoners died in German prison camps during World War II, approximately 40 percent perished in Japanese camps.

✒ Images from the Congressional Committee Investigating Nazi Atrocities, 1945

Introduction

Approximately one year after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the Allied armies began to converge on Germany. In the spring of 1945, the American army got its first glimpse of the Nazi concentration camp system. Patton’s Third Army liberated Ohrdruf, a satellite of the much larger Buchenwald camp, on April 4, 1945. Buchenwald itself was liberated on April 11. Patton was so overwhelmed by the horror that he asked General Eisenhower to come to the camp and bear witness personally. American leaders had been aware of the concentration camps but did not realize the extent or horror of them. On April 12, Eisenhower viewed Ohrdruf with Patton and saw the indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality that would come to be known as the Holocaust, defined by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” Eisenhower subsequently requested a congressional mission with accompanying press to view the concentration camp system and document the horrors there. Later that month, 12 congressmen and six newspaper and magazine editors and publishers made the trip, and all were horrified by what they saw. After returning to the United States, many on the committee contributed to the efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the Holocaust and to reeducate and rebuild Germany. The following images are taken from these visits. Note that the photographs contain disturbing images.

📝 Was the Use of the Atomic Bomb Justified? DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

Ask students to consider the costs of war throughout U.S. history (e.g., American Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War). In what ways would the cost of ending World War II be different? Why? Lead a brief class discussion on student opinions, or have students discuss with a partner to set the scene for the DBQ prompt they will consider in this activity: **Evaluate the use of the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II**.

II. Exploration (15 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Student Document Packet**. Have students work individually to read and annotate each document in the context of the prompt.

III. Application (30–45 min)

After the 15-minute reading period, inform students they may begin writing their responses. Remind students to carefully consider the instructions for their response included on the last page of their document.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment

Collect student responses at the end of the 45-minute writing period. Assess student writing using the AP LEQ Rubric or with an individual class rubric.

📝 <i> Korematsu v. United States</i>  and Japanese Internment DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Lead students in a brief discussion or quick-write responding to the following prompt: “If, as a result of a government order, your family had 48 hours to dispose of your home, car, and all other property before being required to move into distant temporary housing for an undetermined time, which of your inalienable rights might be in jeopardy?” Discuss: In 1942, Japanese Americans living along the West Coast, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, lost both liberty and property under these circumstances. Many sold homes and businesses for only a few dollars or simply abandoned their property. In this activity, students will analyze and evaluate the Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark case, *Korematsu v. United States* (1944).

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Student Document Packet Part 1**, instructing students to work through Documents 1–5. They should annotate information in the documents to show main ideas that will help each side in the controversy. Have students work individually, with a partner, or in small groups to read each source in sequence, answer the accompanying questions, and show how the document could be used to help one side or the other in the case.

III. Application (25 min)

You might divide the class in half and assign one-half to compose the argument that each attorney would present to the Supreme Court. Remind students that this is just an exercise in disciplined thinking and they may be assigned a side with which they personally disagree. See Moot Court Procedures.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

After students have decided the case, distribute **Handout B: Student Document Packet Part** 2 and have the students read Documents 6 and 7, which provide excerpts of the majority and dissenting opinions in this 6–3 decision. Encourage students to compare the justices’ reasoning with their own. Do students think the Court’s majority got it right? For those who say the dissenters were right, ask: What if we discover in the future that there was a well-concealed Japanese spy ring that was thwarted by the exclusion and detention process—would that change your mind?

📝 Unit 6 Civics Connection: The Role of Government According to the Founders and the Progressives

I. Warm-Up Activity (5-10 min)

Ask students to turn to one another in small groups and list some examples of government regulations on their lives. After giving students a few minutes to discuss the question, call for their responses and write on the board a few examples they mention. They may list laws or regulations related to speed limits, minimum wage, compulsory school attendance, building codes, municipal zoning, food service in restaurants, licensing of child-care facilities, and others. Briefly discuss: what assumptions about the role of government are reflected in these regulations?

II. Exploration (20 min)

Instruct students to read the Background Essay and answer the accompanying questions included in **Handout A: Background Essay**. Discuss student answers or collect responses as best fits your classroom. Alternatively, this reading can be assigned as homework to allow more time in class for discussion on the quotations and the concluding writing activity.

III. Application (20–30 min)

Distribute **Handout B: Graphic Organizer: The Role of Government**. Model the completion of the graphic organizer by talking through the first completed example from James Madison in *Federalist Paper* No. 47 (1788). Note that sources have not been included in the student version of the organizer but are completed in the instructor answer guide.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment

Have students write a comparative essay addressing the following prompt: Compare the views of the Founders and Progressives on the proper role of government. Assess student responses using the AP LEQ Rubric.

📝 Unit 6 Civics Connection: The Constitution and Foreign Policy, 1898–1945

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

Project and have students examine the Cartoon Analysis: *A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists*, Victor Gillam, 1899 Primary Source. Discuss what this reveals about U.S. foreign policy over time, up until 1899. Ask students to consider who Uncle Sam represents in this cartoon: the government as a whole? The president? Congress? The nation’s citizens as a whole? Who is responsible for foreign policy? Who does the Constitution say is responsible for foreign policy?

II. Exploration (20 min)

Distribute **Handout A: Separation of Powers and International Involvement**. Students will analyze constitutional provisions related to international affairs by classifying them as creating presidential power, congressional power, or shared power. Students should have copies of the U.S. Constitution to reference for this activity as needed.

III. Application (20–30 min)

Distribute **Handout B: Constitutional Arguments and Foreign Policy**. Students will practice generating constitutional arguments for and against the foreign policy action taken by the U.S. government for important events from 1898 to 1945. The first action has been done as an example. Note that some events may be more challenging to create arguments for than others. The point of the exercise is for students to see that different individuals will have different interpretations of the Constitution’s language regarding foreign policy. Have students complete the analysis questions when they have completed the graphic organizer.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

Lead a brief discussion on the analysis questions on the Constitutional Arguments and Foreign Policy handout or collect students’ responses, as best fits your classroom.

✏ Unit 6 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1945–1980

1945–1960

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 13 Introductory Essay: 1945–1960

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context for societal change from 1945 to 1980
* Explain the extent to which the events of the period from 1945 to 1980 reshaped national identity

Introduction

World War II ended in 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union had cooperated to defeat Nazi Germany, but they mistrusted each other. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, believed the Americans had waited too long before launching the D-Day invasion of France in 1944, leaving his people to bear the full brunt of the German war machine. It was true that Soviet casualties were more than 20 million, whereas American casualties in all theaters of war were fewer than half a million.

The Truman Doctrine and the Cold War

Journalists nicknamed the deteriorating relationship between the two great powers a “cold war,” and the name stuck. In the short run, America possessed the great advantage of being the only possessor of nuclear weapons as a result of the Manhattan Project. It had used two of them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Far East, with destructive power so fearsome it deterred Soviet aggression. But after nearly four years of war, Truman was reluctant to risk a future conflict. Instead, with congressional support, he pledged to keep American forces in Europe to prevent any more Soviet advances. This was the “Truman Doctrine,” a dramatic contrast with the American decision after World War I to withdraw from European affairs ([link]). (See the Harry S. Truman, “Truman Doctrine” Address, March 1947 Primary Source.)

Postwar Uncertainty

The postwar years were politically volatile ones all over the world, due to widespread decolonization. Britain, though allied with the United States during World War II, had been weakened by the conflict and could no longer dominate its remote colonies. The British Empire was shrinking drastically, and this made the Truman Doctrine all the more necessary. In 1947, an economically desperate Britain reluctantly granted India and Pakistan the independence their citizens had sought for years. Britain’s African colonies gained independence in the 1950s and early 1960s. The United States and the Soviet Union each struggled to win over the former British colonies to their own ideological side of the Cold War. (See the Who Was Responsible for Starting the Cold War? Point-Counterpoint and Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace,” March 1946 Primary Source.)

War in Korea

Korea, one of the many parts of Asia that Japan had conquered in the earlier twentieth century but then lost in 1945, was now partitioned into a pro-Communist North and an anti-Communist South. In June 1950, the Truman administration was taken by surprise when North Korea attacked the South, overpowering its army and forcing the survivors back into a small area of the country’s southeast, the Pusan perimeter. Truman and his advisors quickly concluded they should apply the containment principle to Asia and procured a resolution of support from the United Nations, which was unanimous because the Soviet representatives were not present in the Security Council during the vote ([link]). See the Truman Intervenes in Korea Decision Point.)

Prosperity and the Baby Boom

The late 1940s and early 1950s were paradoxical. They were years of great geopolitical stress, danger, and upheaval, yet they were also a time of prosperity and opportunity for millions of ordinary American citizens. Far more babies were born each year than in the 1930s, resulting in the large “baby boom” generation. Millions of new houses were built to meet a need accumulated over the long years of the Great Depression and the war. Suburbs expanded around every city, creating far better and less-crowded living conditions than ever before. Levittown housing developments were just one example of the planned communities with mass-produced homes across the country that made homeownership within the reach of many, though mostly white families, thanks to cheap loans for returning veterans (See the Levittown Videos, 1947–1957 Primary Source). Wages and living standards increased, and more American consumers found they could afford their own homes, cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, and even television sets—TV was then a new and exciting technology ([link]). The entire nation breathed a sigh of relief on discovering that peace did not bring a return of depression-era conditions and widespread unemployment. (See The Sound of the Suburbs Lesson.)

Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare

Fear of communism, not only abroad but at home, was one of the postwar era’s great obsessions. Ever since the Russian Revolution of 1917, a small and dedicated American Communist Party had aimed to overthrow capitalism and create a Communist America. Briefly popular during the crisis of the Great Depression and again when Stalin was an American ally in World War II, the party shrank during the early Cold War years. Rising politicians like the young California congressman Richard Nixon nevertheless discovered that anti-Communism was a useful issue for gaining visibility. Nixon helped win publicity for the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), whose hearings urged former communists to expose their old comrades in the name of national security, especially in government and Hollywood. In 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order No. 9835, establishing loyalty boards investigating the communist sympathies of 2.5 million federal employees. (See The Postwar Red Scare and the Cold War Spy Cases Narratives.)

From Truman to Eisenhower

After the 1946 midterm election, in which Republicans won a majority in the House and the Senate, the Democratic President Truman struggled to advance his domestic program, called the Fair Deal in an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. For instance, Truman was the first American president to propose a system of universal health care, but the Republican Congress voted it down because they opposed the cost and regulations associated with the government program and called it “socialized medicine.” Truman did succeed in other areas. He was able to encourage Congress to pass the Employment Act of 1946, committing the government to ensuring full employment. By executive order, he desegregated the American armed forces and commissioned a report on African American civil rights. He thus played an important role in helping advance the early growth of the civil rights movement.

Birth of the Civil Rights Movement

Encouraged by early signs of a change in national racial policy and by the Supreme Court’s decision in *Brown v. Board of Education* (1954), African American organizations intensified their efforts to challenge southern segregation. Martin Luther King Jr., then a spellbinding young preacher in Montgomery, Alabama, led a Montgomery bus boycott that began in December 1955. Inspired by the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a city bus, African Americans refused to ride Montgomery’s buses unless the company abandoned its policy of forcing them to ride at the back and to give up their seats to whites when the bus was crowded. After a year, the boycott succeeded. King went on to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which practiced nonviolent resistance as a tactic, attracting press attention, embarrassing the agents of segregation, and promoting racial integration. (See the Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott Narrative and the Rosa Parks’s Account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Radio Interview), April 1956 Primary Source.)

The Space Race

The desegregation of schools was only one aspect of public concern about education in the 1950s. The Soviet Union launched an artificial orbiting satellite, “Sputnik,” in 1957 and ignited the “Space Race.” Most Americans were horrified, understanding that a rocket able to carry a satellite into space could also carry a warhead to the United States. Congress reacted by passing the National Defense Education Act in August 1958, devoting \$1 billion of federal funds to education in science, engineering, and technology in the hope of improving the nation’s scientific talent pool.

New Roles for Women

American women, especially in the large and growing middle class, were in a paradoxical situation in the 1950s. In one sense, they were the most materially privileged generation of women in world history, wealthier than any predecessors. More had gained college education than ever before, and millions were marrying young, raising their children with advice from Dr. Spock’s best-selling *Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care* (1946), and enjoying labor-saving domestic devices and modern conveniences like washing machines, toasters, and electric ovens. Affluence meant many middle-class women were driving cars of their own. This 1950s advertisement for Ford automobiles persuaded women to become a “two Ford family.” At the same time, however, some suffered various forms of depression and anxiety, seeking counseling, often medicating themselves, and feeling a lack of purpose in their lives.

🔎 Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the continuities and changes in Cold War policies from 1945 to 1980

🔎 The G.I. Bill

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the migration of various groups of Americans after 1945

🔎 The Berlin Airlift

🔎 The Postwar Red Scare

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the Red Scare after World War II

🔎 Cold War Spy Cases

🔎 The Korean War and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir

🔎 Jackie Robinson

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980

🔎 The Murder of Emmett Till

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why the civil rights movements developed and expanded from 1945 to 1960

🔎 Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

🔎 The Little Rock Nine

🔎 The National Highway Act

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes of economic growth in the years after World War II

🔎 The Nixon–Khrushchev Kitchen Debate

🔎 William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time

🔎 Sputnik and NASA

🔎 Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Baby Boom

📍 Truman Intervenes in Korea

📍 Truman Fires General Douglas MacArthur

📍 Eisenhower and the Suez Canal Crisis

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:

* Explain the various military and diplomatic responses to international developments over time

💬 Was Federal Spending on the Space Race Justified?

Issue on the Table

Was the federal spending on the space race justified or was it a misallocation of money that could be better spent elsewhere?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question posed, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

Federal spending on the U.S. space program, especially in the 1960s, was considerable and characterized by almost unheard-of rates of growth. Outlays on space and science went from \$0 in 1948 to more than \$100 million in 1957 and peaking at \$7 billion in 1967. Spending did not reach this level again until 1980 and never again in inflation-adjusted terms for the remainder of the Cold War. All told, the United States spent about \$30 billion on the space race from the time the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957 until the moon landing in 1969.

Claim B

The space race was expensive. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects, which eventually put American astronauts on the moon, cost \$25 billion at the time and more than \$110 billion when adjusted for inflation. The United States spent more than \$200 billion on the space shuttle and another \$50 billion on the International Space Station. From its creation in 1958 through 2018, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spent almost one trillion inflation-adjusted dollars. As large as those sums are, however, NASA’s annual spending typically represents a mere 0.5 percent or less of the federal budget. But comparisons offer a perspective raw numbers can obscure. NASA has a larger budget than the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, or the Smithsonian Institution, yet each year Americans spend twice as much on pizza as they spend on space exploration.

💬 Who Was Responsible for Starting the Cold War?

Issue on the Table

Was one superpower primarily responsible for starting the Cold War, or did both the United States and the Soviet Union contribute to its rise?

Instructions

Claim A

During the Cold War, Americans were convinced the Soviet Union posed a grave threat to their country and the rest of the planet and that, as the leader of the free world, the United States had a responsibility to resist Soviet expansionism. But might a different approach to foreign affairs by the United States in the years immediately after World War II have prevented the Cold War altogether?

Claim B

With the opening of American archives in the 1970s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, scholars now have access to all the documents describing the intentions and assumptions of decision-makers in both countries in the years after World War II. Supposed mysteries have been solved. Old questions have been answered. The documentary evidence is in. The United States and the Soviet Union both contributed to the rise of the Cold War. They were ideological nation-states with incompatible and mutually exclusive ideologies. The founding purpose of the Soviet Union was global domination, and it actively sought the destruction of the United States and its allies. If the United States wanted to continue as a nation-state that protected the rights enshrined in its founding documents, it needed to wage an active opposition to the Soviet Union.

✒ Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace,” March 1946

Introduction

World War II had recently ended, Europe was in the process of rebuilding, and two new powers entered the world stage: the United States and the Soviet Union. These two powers maintained very different ideologies and outlooks about not only the future of their respective countries but also that of the world. Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who had been defeated just eight months prior to this address, delivered an extremely influential speech on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Missouri. Overall, Churchill believed the only way to prevent the Soviet Union from asserting its power over the globe was a united England and America leading other countries in the prevention of Russian imperialism. President Harry S. Truman hosted Churchill on his speaking tour and was in attendance during this speech. The Sinews of Peace Speech is considered to be the first formal volley thrown during the Cold War.

✒ Levittown Videos, 1947–1957

Introduction

Levittown was the name given to suburban housing developments in New York and Pennsylvania created by the company Levitt & Sons between 1947 and 1963. Using an “assembly line” method, the company was able to construct a house in as little as one day. The communities were attractive to growing families during the baby boom and veterans were able to afford the houses with low-cost mortgages obtained through the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration. However, lenders at the Federal Housing Administration implemented racist policies during the loan approval process and many communities excluded people of color, regardless of their veteran status or income.

Levittown Videos

Watch the *Creators of Communities* newsreel.

✒ Harry S. Truman, “Truman Doctrine” Address, March 1947

Introduction

On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman addressed the U.S. Congress, proposing immediate economic and military aid to governments threatened by Communist insurrections in the aftermath of World War II. This was in direct response to the Soviet expansion into Greece and Turkey, which ultimately laid the foundation for the Cold War. Congress responded to Truman’s proposal by authorizing the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was a four-year program intended to help rebuild the economies of Western Europe after the war. Congress approved the plan, which was aimed at rebuilding industry, removing trade barriers, and restoring prosperity as quickly as possible in the region. One objective was to restore U.S. trade partners, but equally important was blunting the appeal of communism in the war-torn nations.

✒ George Kennan (“Mr. X”), “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” July 1947

Introduction

As the ashes of a devastated Europe were finally settling at the end of World War II, the ideological lines for the next conflict were being drawn. The Soviet Union and United States had been able to set aside their differences to defeat fascism, but without a common enemy, they soon began to clash. Although some in the United States believed the West could cooperate with the Soviet Union, others argued that communism and capitalism were antitheses. George Kennan was a foreign service officer who studied Russia’s history and policies. In 1947, he took a report he had developed on the Cold War for Secretary of State James Forrestal and published it in *Foreign Affairs* under the pseudonym “X.”

✒ Richard Nixon, “Checkers” Speech, September 1952

Introduction

Senator Richard M. Nixon, who had made a name for himself as a staunch opponent of domestic communism, was chosen as the vice presidential running mate for Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential campaign in 1952. When Nixon’s opponents raised doubts concerning a campaign fund and questioned gifts that Nixon had received, many thought Eisenhower would dump Nixon from the Republican ticket. Instead of giving up, Richard Nixon gave a televised speech to the nation to defend his integrity and character. Providing many details about his family’s modest lifestyle, Nixon stated that he only used the fund to reimburse legitimate travel and office expenses. Nixon mentioned one gift, a cocker spaniel puppy that his young daughter had named Checkers. The “Checkers” speech is remembered as one of the most important speeches of Nixon’s political career.

✒ Rosa Parks’s Account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Radio Interview), April 1956

Introduction

On December 1, 1955, a tired Rosa Parks left work as a department store tailor’s assistant and planned to ride home on a city bus. She sat down between the “whites only” section in the front of the bus and the “colored” section in the back. Black riders only sat in this area if the back was filled. When a white man entered the crowded bus, the bus driver ordered four African American passengers to stand so the white passenger could sit. Parks refused and was arrested. Parks was an active participant in the civil rights movement for several years and was well trained in civil rights activism. She served as secretary of both the Montgomery and Alabama state NAACP and founded the youth council of the local NAACP. Her calm and resolute refusal to give up her seat led to a 13-month boycott that ended segregation on Montgomery city buses. The following is her description of her arrest from a 1956 radio interview.

✒ Critics of Postwar Culture: Jack Kerouac, <i> On the Road</i>  (Excerpts), 1957

Introduction

Just as the Lost Generation emerged after World War I to voice angst with the postwar society, the Beat Generation found a voice after World War II. Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg saw emptiness in consumerist America, rejected traditional societal norms on sex and drug use, and emphasized spiritual journeys to find meaning in life. Kerouac claimed to have written *On the Road* in three weeks and based the book on his travels across the United States. In it, Kerouac is represented by the character Sal, and fellow Beat author Neal Cassady is represented by the character Dean. Sal and Dean travel the country in search of “IT,” which is described as “the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.” The entire narrative emphasizes jazz, the music of counterculture. The following excerpt occurs when the pair reach Chicago.

✒ Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 1961

Introduction

During his eight years in office, Dwight Eisenhower presided over a changing nation and world. The Cold War was heating up during the 1950s and Eisenhower made sure the United States was in a position to remain safe and stop the spread of Communism around the world. In his farewell address, Eisenhower surprised many Americans by expressing his concerns about the growing “military-industrial complex” and cautioned people to keep an eye on the growing military.

✒ Nam Paik, <i>Electronic Superhighway</i>, 1995

Introduction

The National Defense Highway Act, signed into law by President Eisenhower in June 1956, was the largest public works project in U.S. history. As a young soldier in 1919, Dwight Eisenhower toured the nation to test its roads for the U.S. Army. The poor conditions he witnessed during his travel coupled with his exposure to the German autobahn during World War II strengthened his belief that the United States needed an efficient, stable, national highway system. He became further resolved in his opinion when the Cold War began at the end of World War II. The threat of an attack by the Soviet Union made military transportation and civilian evacuation routes from cities even more essential. This new highway system helped connect the nation by making travel and the movement of economic goods faster and more accessible for Americans.

📝 McCarthyism DBQ

I. Warm-Up Activity (5 min)

Have students read the First Amendment on **Handout A** and answer the questions either in discussion or on paper.

II. Exploration (50 min)

III. Application (10 min)

Have students craft a thesis statement for the following prompt: Explain the extent to which anti-communist hysteria during the second Red Scare violated civil liberties.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5 min)

Collect the thesis statements and use the DBQ rubric from the College Board to grade the submissions.

📝 Kennedy vs. Nixon: TV and Politics

📝 The Sound of the Suburbs

✏ Unit 7 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1960–1968

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 14 Introductory Essay: 1960–1968

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context for societal change from 1945 to 1980
* Explain the various military and diplomatic responses to international developments over time
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time
* Explain the extent to which the events of the period from 1945 to 1980 reshaped national identity

Introduction

The 1960s opened as an optimistic decade for Americans. The strength of the country’s industrial and consumer economy was preeminent in the postwar world. The Cold War had spawned a broad anti-communist consensus against the Soviet Union among most Americans despite fears of a nuclear war. African Americans and women continued to work to attain greater equality in civil rights. President John F. Kennedy represented a new generation that was coming to leadership, and in his inaugural address, he called for a shared vision of progress.

Election of 1960

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in 1917, the grandson of Irish-Catholic immigrants who came to the United States in the nineteenth century to escape poverty and oppression in their homeland. Joseph P. Kennedy, John Kennedy’s father, a wealthy investor and canny politician, was determined to see one of his sons become president. After wartime service in the U.S. Navy, John Kennedy was elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946, then moved on to the U.S. Senate six years later. In 1960, he secured the Democratic presidential nomination. Forty-three years old, handsome, Harvard educated, and a war hero, he exuded what the Kennedy family described as “vigor.” His campaign slogan was the “New Frontier,” and he promised to “get the country moving again.”

Foreign Policy in the Kennedy Administration

In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had charged that the outgoing Eisenhower administration was responsible for a “missile gap” by allowing the Soviet Union to outstrip the United States in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, thus putting the country at risk of defeat in a nuclear war. In reality, the United States was far ahead of the Soviet military in the arms race, although the Soviets worked hard to close that gap over the next decade.

Domestic Policy in the Kennedy Administration

Although Kennedy paid relatively little attention to domestic reform issues until near the end of his time in office, he supported some measures in the postwar liberal agenda. In the spring of 1961, Congress passed the administration’s Area Redeployment Act, which provided loans to businesses willing to relocate to depressed areas like Appalachia, as well as a small increase in the minimum wage. The next year, Congress passed, and Kennedy signed, the Manpower Development and Training Act, which created programs for the retraining of workers displaced by automation. Neither measure did much to stimulate economic growth or lift Americans out of poverty, however.

Civil Rights

On February 1, 1960, four African American freshmen at the all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical college in Greensboro walked into a local Woolworth’s department store, purchased a few items, then sat down at the lunch counter to order a cup of coffee ([link]). They were refused service because the custom of segregation in the city prevented whites and blacks to be from being seated in the same eating place. After 45 minutes, the four got up and left.

Women’s Movement

Historians credit the civil rights movement with inspiring a “rights revolution” in the 1960s. Women’s fight for equality had been a powerful cause in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage in 1920, the women’s movement had lost momentum. In the 1960s, however, a “second wave” feminist movement took form, sparked in part by the 1963 publication of journalist Betty Friedan’s book *The Feminine Mystique* and its influence on middle-class white feminists (see the Betty Friedan and the Women’s Movement Narrative).

The 1964 Election

John Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), took the oath of office as the thirty-sixth president of the United States on the flight from Dallas back to Washington, DC, on November 22, 1963 ([link]), the day of Kennedy’s assassination. Johnson’s background was that of a politically connected but homespun Texan rather than a member of the East Coast elite. He had been elected to the House of Representatives in 1937 and to the Senate in 1948. A master of the legislative process in Washington, he became Senate majority leader in 1955. His ambitions were boundless. And now, thrust into the White House with the next presidential election less than a year away, Johnson had to prepare for the greatest challenge of his political life.

The Great Society

President Johnson began delivering on his promise of liberal legislation months before his triumph in November. In the spring of 1964, he secured passage of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places. He also secured passage of Kennedy’s tax cut. Then, in August, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, the fulfillment of his call in his State of the Union address the preceding January for “an unconditional war on poverty” (see the Was the Great Society Successful? Point-Counterpoint).

The Warren Court

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court dramatically broadened the definition of the constitutional rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens. Under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court’s decisions, beginning with *Brown v. Board of Education* in 1954, encouraged and lent legitimacy to new social movements. The court also became embroiled in the divided politics and culture of the 1960s, leading to a public debate about its role and powers.

President Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam

Although President Johnson assured voters in the 1964 campaign that he was not going to send “American boys” to fight a war in Vietnam that should be fought by “Asian boys,” he was already considering an escalation of the conflict after the election. On the night of August 4, 1964, after an incident involving North Vietnamese torpedo boats a few days before in the Gulf of Tonkin, the USS *Maddox* responded to sonar signals and, deciding it was once again under attack, fired into the darkness.

Student Movements

In the spring of 1962, several dozen student delegates met in Port Huron, Michigan, to adopt a program for a radical new campus group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). After several days of debate, they arrived at a consensus and adopted the Port Huron Statement, a declaration of generational identity. SDS was the principal “New Left” organization in the 1960s that questioned the authority and legitimacy of society’s institutions.

Counterculture

In the two decades after World War II, the average age at first marriage dropped, the birth rate soared, and 76 million babies were born. This generation of babies, born between 1946 and 1964, made up the “baby boom,” and as the baby boomers grew up, retailers eagerly catered to consumer demands for necessities (e.g., diapers, clothing, footwear) as well as diversions (e.g., toys, movies, records).

Civil Rights and Black Power

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the civil rights movement maintained pressure on President Johnson and Congress with its voting rights campaign. In 1965, the SCLC launched its campaign in Selma, Alabama, in a county where only 300 of 15,000 blacks of voting age had been allowed to register. After weeks of demonstrations at the county courthouse, on March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led 600 marchers across the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, spanning the Alabama River. They planned to continue on to the state capitol in Montgomery to present their grievances. Instead, Alabama state police and a mounted sheriff’s posse charged the peaceful demonstrators, beating them to the ground with clubs, cattle prods, and whips. Scores of marchers, including Lewis, were hospitalized, and television footage of the assault outraged much of the nation.

Rise of the Conservative Movement

Liberalism blazed through the 1960s like a meteor, winning some important political victories like civil rights legislation and reshaping the cultural landscape. But in the course of the same decade, conservatives established themselves as a unified and potent political force and redrew the map of American electoral politics. As a result, conservatism became a dominant force in national politics for several decades.

🔎 John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the various military and diplomatic responses to international developments over time
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time

🔎 Freedom Riders

🔎 Rachel Carson and <i> Silent Spring</i>

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why policies related to the environment developed and changed from 1968 to 1980

🔎 The Cuban Missile Crisis

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the various military and diplomatic responses to international developments over time

🔎 The March on Birmingham

🔎 Betty Friedan and the Women's Movement

🔎 The Vietnam War: Ia Drang Valley

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the Vietnam War

🔎 Students and the Anti-War Movement

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how mass culture has been maintained or challenged over time
* Explain how and why opposition to existing policies and values developed and changed over the course of the 20th century

🔎 Black Power

🔎 The Election of 1968

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the Vietnam War
* Explain how and why opposition to existing policies and values developed and changed over the course of the 20th century

📍 Protests at the University of California, Berkeley

📍 Free Speech and the Student Anti-War Movement

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why opposition to existing policies and values developed and changed over the course of the 20th century

📍 Lyndon B. Johnson’s Decision Not to Run in 1968

💬 Was the Great Society Successful?

Issue on the Table

Was the Great Society successful in using government programs to eradicate poverty for greater equality and opportunity in America, or did the Great Society fail to eradicate poverty and result in massive, unsustainable federal programs?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” as one of the foundation stones in building the United States into “the Great Society.” A decade later, poverty appeared to be in retreat. If Johnson’s program did not eradicate all poverty, it ameliorated it considerably. The national poverty rate was 19 percent in 1964. Ten years later, it had dropped to below 11.2 percent, and it has never gone above 15.2 percent since then. As Johnson aide Joseph Califano Jr. noted, this “was the most dramatic decline [in poverty] over such a brief period in this century.”

Claim B

President Lyndon Johnson fought two wars in the 1960s: one against communism in Vietnam and one against poverty at home. His policies failed to provide a victory in either conflict. South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975, and we are still fighting the war on poverty today—a result of the unintended consequences of the faith in government solutions to social problems.

✒ John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

Introduction

On January 20, 1961, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the oath of office to the thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, during a televised inauguration ceremony. Kennedy was elected during a political climate that threatened the possibility of nuclear war against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s communist system of government and the fear of the spread of communist ideology was the topic of Kennedy’s speech, but he also called for a new generation of American and global citizens to unite against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. In his speech, President Kennedy urged U.S. citizens to participate in public service and “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

✒ Rachel Carson, <i>Silent Spring</i>, 1962

Introduction

In 1962, scientist Rachel Carson published *Silent Spring* to alert the public to the dangers of DDT, a pesticide that was widely used to control mosquito populations. *Silent Spring* begins with a bucolic description of an American town. One spring, “some evil spell” seeped into the community, silencing birds and bees, leaving flocks of chicken dead, cattle and sheep ill, and even humans and their children sick. By creating this fable, Carson hoped American readers could begin to visualize the effects of DDT. In addition to indicting businesses that produced DDT, *Silent Spring* critiqued the government for its failure to consider the consequences of spreading DDT from farms to neighborhoods across America. Carson’s work brought her criticism from leaders in the sciences, agribusiness, and the chemical industry. Because of this controversy, *Silent Spring* became the centerpiece of a national debate, sold more than 600,000 copies in its first year, and succeeded in reaching the mainstream audience that Carson had intended. When it was published, the suggestion that scientific advances like pesticides could be damaging to the environment was a radical idea. Thanks to Carson’s message, President Kennedy set up a special panel of his Science Advisory Committee to study the problem of pesticides. Today, the publication of *Silent Spring* is considered a fundamental step in the development of the environmental movement.

✒ Students for a Democratic Society, "Port Huron Statement," 1962

Introduction

In 1962, the recently formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met at Port Huron, Michigan. Under the leadership of University of Michigan student Tom Hayden, SDS delegates drafted a declaration of purposes, or manifesto, known as the “Port Huron Statement.” The “Port Huron Statement” reflects the dissatisfaction and disillusionment many young people felt in the 1960s. The authors described their frustrations with the world they inherited and how it could be improved. The “Port Huron Statement” became the ideological basis of the New Left, and college campuses became centers for protest throughout the decade. Mississippi Freedom Summer and President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War gave SDS a recruitment boost: by 1968, SDS had grown to 100,000 members. By the end of the decade, SDS splintered into several groups. The actions of its most radical and violent fringe, known as the Weathermen, discredited the early idealism set forth in the “Port Huron Statement.”

✒ Betty Friedan, <i>The Feminine Mystique</i>, 1963

Introduction

The document provided is excerpted from *The Feminine Mystique* (1963) by Betty Friedan. Friedan graduated from Smith College in 1942 and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked as a journalist in the 1940s and 1950s, and, as part of her fifteenth college reunion, she surveyed her graduating class about their lives. Their feelings of unfulfillment as stay-at-home wives and mothers provided the inspiration for *The Feminine Mystique.* The goal of the book was to empower fellow college-educated women to seek fulfilling careers outside the home and to not limit their options to simply being wives and mothers. Although an earlier generation of feminists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had secured suffrage for women, Friedan’s book encouraged a new generation of feminists to seek a broader social change by which women would seek opportunities in careers previously denied to them.

✒ Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963

Introduction

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was established in 1957 to coordinate protests against segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was heavily influenced by its first leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who advocated a policy of nonviolence. King and his allies refused to engage in violence, even when attacked. King’s strategy of nonviolence drew a public statement of concern from eight white religious leaders in an open letter entitled “A Call for Unity,” published in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 12, 1963. At the time, King was imprisoned in Birmingham for his participation in another nonviolent protest. While in prison, King was placed alone in a dark cell, with no mattress, and denied any phone calls. An ally smuggled in the paper that had published “A Call for Unity.” King began to write a reply on the newspaper itself, having no other paper available to him in his cell. The resulting “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was addressed to his critics directly. It was later published several times, as several versions, in the summer of 1963. The full text of the letter was published by King directly in his 1964 book, *Why We Can’t Wait*.

✒ Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963

Introduction

The year 1963 marked the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the campaign for civil rights for African Americans meant, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “to make real the promise of democracy.” After an important moral and political victory in Birmingham, Alabama, movement leaders were eager to build momentum and planned to march on Washington, DC. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963, and drew a record turnout of 250,000 protesters. Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as a dramatic ending to the march. In his speech, King pleaded for civil and economic rights for African Americans and an end to racism in the United States.

✒ The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 1964

Introduction

After U.S. Navy ships were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress for a resolution expressing “the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia.” Although the United States had been involved on a small scale in southeast Asia since the 1950s in an effort to prevent the spread of communism, the ensuing Gulf of Tonkin Resolution led the nation to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Vietnam within a few years. The resolution was passed unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives and passed the U.S. Senate with only two senators voting against it.

✒ Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” April 12, 1964

Introduction

Amid a trend of increasing violence against civil rights workers and supporters, many activists became skeptical of the multiracial, nonviolent approach espoused by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). New leaders offering a more militant message began to emerge, including Malcolm X. Though Malcolm X respected King as a “fellow leader of our people,” he criticized King’s integrationist and nonviolent message and promoted a philosophy of black nationalism, which was centered on economic self-sufficiency, racial pride, and separatism. In developing this philosophy, Malcolm X was influenced by his one-time mentor and leader, Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, who advocated a separate state for African Americans. On April 12, 1964, a presidential election year, Malcolm X delivered a speech to a large audience gathered at King Solomon Baptist Church, in Detroit, Michigan. His speech became known for a phrase he repeated throughout: “the ballot or the bullet.” Despite the simplicity of this phrase, his message was much more complex and resonated with many who were disillusioned by the repeated responses of brutality and racism against nonviolent protest.

✒ Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at the University of Michigan (“Great Society” Speech), May 22, 1964

Introduction

President Lyndon Johnson hailed from Texas and began his political career as a devoted Roosevelt Democrat. Johnson served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate from 1937 to 1961. A master of the legislative process in Washington, DC, he became Senate majority leader in 1955 and John F. Kennedy’s vice president in 1960. When Johnson assumed the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination, he made clear his goals to continue and expand on Kennedy’s social reforms and fulfill the vision of the New Deal. In his 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” in the United States. In May, Johnson delivered the following commencement address at the University of Michigan. His speech became known as the Great Society speech because he laid out his vision to “advance the quality of our American civilization.” Like the New Deal, Johnson’s vision for the country resulted in multiple new programs that would have lasting effects on the United States, such as the Food Stamp Act (1964), Medicare (1965), Medicaid (1965), and the Higher Education Act (1965). The passage of key components of the Great Society marked the apex of postwar liberalism, but the growth in the federal government was questioned by a growing conservative movement.

✒ Lyndon B. Johnson, “Peace Without Conquest,” April 7, 1965

Introduction

After the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson began to escalate the deployment of U.S. military forces to engage against North Vietnam. In February 1965, he ordered the start of Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign on North Vietnam that would grow over the next few years. Johnson hoped the bombing raids would demonstrate American commitment to its South Vietnamese ally. An increasing number of Americans expressed their disapproval of becoming involved in a war halfway around the world, and Johnson used the following speech to respond to these concerns and outline U.S. goals in Vietnam.

✒ The Vietnam War Experience: An Interview with Veteran William Maxwell Barner III

Introduction

William Barner III was drafted in 1966 as the United States was building up its forces in Vietnam. He was assigned to a howitzer battery group and deployed the following year. The howitzer batteries were giant guns placed on vehicles that would drive to areas close to combat zones to assist U.S. infantry. Barner served in the command track for his unit; he was responsible for receiving radio requests for artillery support from infantry in combat. He would then direct the 13 guns in his group to fire, on the basis of calculations accounting for several factors, such as elevation, weather, and distance. The following is a portion of an interview that he gave in 2012 to the Veterans History Project.

✒ Image Analysis: March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967

Introduction

During the 1960s, many young people were involved in diverse movements that later merged into the anti-war movement. The student movement was led by Students for a Democratic Society, a group of radical young intellectuals who were dissatisfied with Cold War containment policy, the military-industrial complex, and corporate affluence and power. Many in the student movement participated in Freedom Summer and supported the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Other young people embraced the counter-cultural lifestyle of the Beatniks and questioned social and cultural norms. They listened to folk and rock music, took drugs, wore their hair long, and dressed in “hippie” clothing to express their opposition to cultural norms. Some joined communes in bohemian neighborhoods in San Francisco, New York, and other cities. Some joined fringe groups such as the “Yippies,” or Youth International Party, which engaged in acts of absurd street theater with stunts such as nominating a pig for president and burning money to mock American society. Others supported movements such as those in favor of civil rights, women’s rights, or environmentalism. Millions of other students fell on a spectrum of political activism, and many may have joined a local anti-war protest. In particular, fear of being drafted spurred many young people to protest the war.

✒ Walter Cronkite Speaks Out against Vietnam, February 27, 1968

Introduction

During the 1960s and 1970s, television was one of primary ways people received their news. Newspapers circulated widely and radios still offered newscasts, but many Americans wanted to watch while they listened to their news. During this time, Walter Cronkite was the standard bearer on CBS news. He covered many historic events and, during his career, he became one of the most trusted people on television. The war in Vietnam seemed to be dragging on and Cronkite wanted to go to Vietnam and see for himself what the war was truly about. After his visit, he came home and shared his personal commentary on the situation. This aired on February 27, 1968.

📝 Civil Disobedience across Time

I. Warm-Up Activity (10 min)

Students will read the excerpt from the opening of the Declaration of Independence and answer some questions to analyze what the document says is the duty of people in the face of a violation of natural rights. After allowing time for the students to read the document and brainstorm responses with a partner, the teacher will lead a discussion. The discussion should allow students to share their interpretations.

II. Exploration (40 min)

In pairs, students will read two primary source documents, in Handouts B and C. Each student will read and analyze one of the documents. The students will then take turns sharing what they have learned about the document with each other. After the presentation, each student will then read the second document to see if they agree with the conclusions their partner has reached. In this stage, the teacher should move about the classroom to confirm that students are analyzing the documents correctly. This observation and questioning will serve as formative assessments for the lesson.

III. Application (25 min)

Each student will write an individual reflection essay responding to the prompt: *Is injustice most effectively corrected by resistance to the system, or action using the tools the system provides?* The essay must make specific citations to the texts to support each claim made in the essay.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Option 1: Student will conduct a peer review of the reflection essay written by the partner they worked with on this assignment.

📝 The Music of the Civil Rights Movement

📝 Civil Rights DBQ

📝 A Civil Rights Investigation: Mississippi Burning

📝 We Shall Overcome: The Fight for Voting Rights

✏ Unit 7 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1968–1980

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 15 Introductory Essay: 1968–1980

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context for societal change from 1945 to 1980
* Explain the extent to which the events of the period from 1945 to 1980 reshaped national identity

Introduction

The economic, political, and social disruptions America experienced in the 1960s continued into the 1970s. New movements arose that pushed for the civil rights of African Americans, Latinos, American Indians, gay people, and women. Environmentalists warned of the need to curb pollution, and federal regulations were passed that hampered economic growth. Meanwhile, a debate raged over whether the United States should continue the policy of containment of communism or reach an accommodation with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. To Americans who lived through this era, it appeared as if every conceivable issue was a cause for polarizing debate.

The Tet Offensive and the Turbulent 1968 Election

In 1968, America experienced its most politically disruptive year since World War II. The year began with the Tet Offensive, a military operation that communist North Vietnam had timed to coincide with the American presidential primaries. In military terms, this campaign proved disastrous for the Communist forces, with the United States killing 30,000 soldiers and nearly destroying the guerrilla insurgency in South Vietnam. Politically, however, North Vietnam secured its objectives. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had given Americans the impression that the Vietnam War was being won and would soon end. When the U.S. news media depicted the Tet Offensive as a North Vietnamese victory, a “credibility gap” opened, and the public began to distrust the White House. Americans saw a North Vietnamese army not on the brink of defeat but on the verge of victory. (See the Did U.S. Media Provide Fair and Accurate Coverage of the Tet Offensive? Point-Counterpoint.)

The Nixon Administration: Foreign Policy

On the foreign policy front, Nixon faced a dilemma. The Democratic Congress, which had supported Johnson’s Vietnam policy for years, would not do the same for Nixon. Most Democratic politicians expected Nixon to walk away from the war. North Vietnamese leaders had no incentive to negotiate peace, because they knew Congress was inclined to abandon South Vietnam. Nixon did not wish to give up on South Vietnam, but he also knew he could not escalate the war by sending more U.S. troops. Complicating matters, the American public had conflicting views: they wanted to end the war but disliked the idea of handing victory to North Vietnam. Yet, the majority of Americans despised both the war and the anti-war protestors. Nixon believed his best options were to find wiggle room among the public’s conflicting desires and to bypass Congress as much as possible. (See the Vietnam War DBQ Lesson.)

The Nixon Administration: Domestic Policy

On the domestic front, Nixon had several goals. First, he wanted to drastically reduce campus anti-war protest and unrest. Second, he sought to continue the process begun in 1968 of winning over elements of the Democratic electoral coalition. Third, he worked on building a Republican electoral majority by capturing the votes of working-class southern whites and northern Catholics. And fourth, he embraced some traditionally Democratic issues, such as federal welfare programs and environmental regulation, which would divide liberals and perhaps promote defections to the Republican Party. His domestic policies sought to replace Great Society programs with more conservative social policies.

Social movements

Nixon also presided over the growing influence of the conservative movement. Meanwhile, the Democratic New Deal coalition of ethnic workers, unions, blacks, Jews, and southerners began to divide. Affluent liberals challenged party regulars for control of the party and moved it to the left with the rights revolutions.

The Fracturing of the Democratic New Deal Coalition

Senator George McGovern of South Dakota vowed to reform the Democratic presidential nominating process after the disastrous 1968 Chicago convention. His reforms placed the power of nomination into the hands of primary voters rather than labor union leaders and Democratic office holders. McGovern then announced he would run for president, taking advantage of the fact that in low-turnout primaries, motivated and organized liberal voters offered the margin of victory. He mobilized upper-income voters, college campuses, NOW, and other rights groups to secure the nomination. His supporters refused to make peace with hostile union and big-city politicians, however, or with culturally conservative southern whites.

Watergate and the Fall of Richard Nixon

Nixon’s triumph proved short-lived. His downfall had begun in 1969, when he ordered U.S. forces to bomb Laos to destroy the sanctuaries of communist forces. Hostile government officials leaked the fact to the news media and congressional Democrats. Seeking to plug the leaks, Nixon’s operatives established what they called a “plumbers’ unit” to place critics under surveillance. Lacking responsible oversight, the “plumbers” were caught in 1972 after breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel to plant listening devices.

Economic Troubles in the 1970s

Nixon’s downfall represented just one of many shocks Americans experienced in the 1970s. In 1973, because the United States supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the mainly Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) retaliated by embargoing oil to the United States ([link]). As a result, American consumers paid 400 percent more for oil and gasoline, waiting in line for hours to buy gas while businesses raised prices to cover higher energy costs. The OPEC oil embargo commenced an era of simultaneously escalating inflation and economic stagnation known as “stagflation.” The popular postwar Keynesian theory of economics now seemed bereft of solutions, because cutting or raising spending or taxes would only make one of the twin problems worse. (See The 1973 Oil Crisis and Its Economic Consequences Narrative.)

The Carter Administration: Domestic Policy

Former Democratic Governor James “Jimmy” Earl Carter of Georgia ran for the presidency as a Washington outsider in 1976 and won on a pledge to fix the American economy and heal the cultural divisions of the 1960s ([link]). He rallied white southerners to his side, including Southern Baptist minister Jerry Falwell of Virginia, while assuring African Americans that he was a civil rights champion. Carter also told social conservatives he supported traditional family values while he embraced legalized abortion and ratification of the ERA.

The Carter Administration: Foreign Policy

Beyond cultural divisions and an economically crippling double-digit inflation rate, Carter faced enormous foreign policy challenges. In 1975, when North Vietnam invaded and conquered South Vietnam, many Americans had looked away, trying to forget the war. Two years later, President Carter gave an address at Notre Dame University in which he decried America’s “inordinate fear of communism.” Carter repudiated the Truman Doctrine and containment that guided American foreign policy during the Cold War for three decades and attempted to make human rights the center of his foreign policy. He achieved his greatest foreign policy success in negotiating a Middle East peace accord. Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat met at Camp David to discuss their lingering hostility after recent wars. The 1978 Camp David Accords led to Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt’s granting Israel access to the Suez Canal, and formal diplomatic relations between the two nations.

The Rise of Conservatism

Although Carter tried to move to the right on U.S. foreign policy, requiring young men to register for a nonexistent draft and boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, he pleased no one. Conservatives, including Sun Belt libertarians, southern evangelicals, and the Democrats who had voted for Nixon in 1972, wanted tougher measures against the Soviet Union and Iran. Democratic liberals, on the other hand, believed Carter had overreacted in his responses to both countries. Liberals not only rejected his more conservative foreign policy, they believed he knew nothing about domestic policy. They were convinced that regulations and more federal spending programs, including taxpayer-subsidized national health insurance, could cure what was ailing the nation’s economy.

🔎 Neil Armstrong and the Moon Landing

🔎 Kent State

🔎 The Birth Control Pill

🔎 Phyllis Schlafly and the Debate over the Equal Rights Amendment

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time
* Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980

🔎 The Gay Liberation Movement

🔎 Richard Nixon Opens Diplomatic Relations with China

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the continuities and changes in Cold War policies from 1945 to 1980

🔎 Richard Nixon and Watergate

🔎 American Indian Activism and the Siege of Wounded Knee

🔎 The 1973 Oil Crisis and Its Economic Consequences

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the various military and diplomatic responses to international developments over time
* Explain how and why policies related to the environment developed and changed from 1968 to 1980

🔎 The Controversy over Busing

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980

🔎 César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the continuities and changes in immigration patterns over time
* Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980

🔎 Jimmy Carter and the “Malaise” Speech

🔎 Jimmy Carter and the Iran Hostage Crisis

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time
* Explain how and why policies related to the environment developed and changed from 1968 to 1980

📍 Barbara Jordan and Watergate

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government over time

💬 Did U.S. Media Provide Fair and Accurate Coverage of the Tet Offensive?

Issue on the Table

Did the media fairly and accurately report on the Tet Offensive and American policy and military operations in Vietnam?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

The Tet Offensive was a colossal tactical defeat for the Communist forces in Vietnam. The general uprising they had hoped to trigger did not occur. They kept none of the territory they had temporarily captured. And the casualties they sustained were enormous, far in excess of those inflicted on South Vietnamese and American troops. Yet the sheer audacity of the attacks and the brutality of the fighting, especially in the ancient city of Hue, shocked the American public, an effect unforeseen by Tet’s planners. The common view is that Tet somehow became a strategic psychological victory for the North Vietnamese. And the blame for this is often put on incompetent or dishonest reporting by U.S. media outlets.

Claim B

Media coverage of the Tet offensive of early 1968 engendered intense controversy from the very start. Supporters of the administration’s Vietnam War policy, including some of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s top advisers, argued that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong offensive was thoroughly beaten back by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. The latter’s swift and devastating retaliatory strikes dealt a severe blow to the North Vietnamese attackers, thereby bringing the ongoing conflict that much closer to an ultimate American–South Vietnamese victory. The sensationalist and tendentious media coverage of the failed Tet offensive, on the other hand, helped turn public opinion against the administration’s war effort and led a majority of Americans to reject its claims of progress, despite all evidence to the contrary.

✒ Music as Protest: “We Shall Overcome”

Introduction

“We Shall Overcome” is believed to have its origin in the gospel song, “I’ll Overcome Someday” by African American minister and composer Charles Tindley. The song was popularized in the 1960s by folk singers and activists Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the song in March 1968, just days before his assassination:

✒ National Organization for Women (NOW), Bill of Rights, 1968

Introduction

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed in 1966. The group argued in its statement of purpose that “the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the worldwide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.” The immediate cause for the creation of NOW was frustration over sex discrimination in the workplace. Such discrimination was banned by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but NOW’s founding members had grown angry over the lack of enforcement. In 1968, NOW issued the following “bill of rights,” which put forth its demands to ensure women were placed on an equal footing with men.

✒ Indians of All Tribes, Alcatraz Proclamation, 1969

Introduction

In the mid-1960s, a younger, more radical generation of American Indian leaders emerged. The new generation embraced the term “Red Power” and sought to use the media to draw attention to the plight of American Indians and to call for Indian self-determination, that is, self-governance and decision-making on issues that affected their own people rather than falling under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.

✒ Nixon Tapes: The “Smoking Gun” Tape, 1972

Introduction

After reports of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, DC, a growing investigation into the incident began to encircle President Richard Nixon and his reelection campaign. Beginning that August and continuing for almost two years, Nixon denied any White House connection with the burglary. Multiple investigations sought to learn “What did the president know and when did he know it?” After reports of a recording system inside the Oval Office became public, Nixon was eventually forced to hand over all tapes of the recordings. A particular recording from June 23, 1972, became known as the “Smoking Gun” tape. This conversation between the president and his advisor H.R. Haldeman revealed that the president began actively participating in a cover-up of his campaign’s illegal activities less than a week after the Watergate burglary. Nixon was accused of obstruction of justice by the use of hush money and because he instructed various government officials to order other departments to thwart the investigation. Nixon never faced a formal impeachment or other legal proceedings because he resigned from the presidency and was pardoned by his vice president and successor, Gerald Ford.

✒ Art as Protest: Images from the United Farm Workers of America, 1973–1978

Introduction

Migrant workers provided an important source of labor for agriculture in the California and the Southwest. Many of these workers were exposed to harmful pesticides, were poorly paid, and spent their lives in poverty. Efforts at striking or organizing prior to the 1960s were largely unsuccessful because the workers could not unionize and the growers were able to bring in other groups to harvest and break any strike. In 1962, César Chávez, himself a former migrant worker, helped found the National Farm Workers Association, which later became known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). Chávez believed in the use of nonviolence and studied the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Over the next few decades, Chávez organized several strikes, marches, and boycotts to protest conditions for farm workers and bring attention to their cause. His supporters created a variety of images during boycotts to encourage Americans not to purchase farm products in order to pressure growers to agree to the UFW’s demands. Chávez’s famous saying, “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”), helped galvanize his supporters and is still used by activists today.

✒ Herblock, Watergate Cartoons, 1973–1974

Introduction

Herbert Lawrence Block, who signed his cartoons as Herblock, was an editorial cartoonist for the *Washington Post* from the mid-1940s until his death in 2001. Although Block had always been critical of President Richard Nixon, he found new material during the Watergate controversy with which to satirize the president. Starting in 1973, Block published a number of cartoons that kept the public updated on the unfolding scandal. In June 1973, the first of Nixon’s advisors accused the president of involvement in the cover up of the break-in at the Watergate office complex, the location of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The following year, it was revealed that all conversations within the Oval Office were automatically recorded. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes to investigators, citing executive privilege. He argued the tapes contained confidential information that would impede the government and pose a security risk if released. In November 1973, Nixon famously declared “I am not a crook” at a press conference. However, within a few months, Nixon was deemed an “unindicted co-conspirator” by a grand jury and many of his closest aides were found guilty of various illegal activities. On July 27, the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.

✒ Barbara Jordan, Speech on Impeachment, July 25, 1974

Introduction

Barbara Jordan, a Democrat from Texas, was the first southern African American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. On July 25, 1974, Jordan delivered an inspiring speech to the House Judiciary Committee, on national television, calling for an impeachment trial of then-president Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Not only was Jordan one of the younger members of the Judiciary Committee, she was also one of the few women. What stood out about Jordan’s speech was how she used the Constitution to support her claim for articles of impeachment against Nixon, as opposed to making it a partisan affair. Two days after Jordan delivered this speech, the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment. President Nixon resigned from office on August 7, 1973.

✒ Jimmy Carter, “Malaise” Speech, July 15, 1979

Introduction

President Jimmy Carter delivered this speech on July 15, 1979, exactly three years after accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for president. The president was scheduled to deliver a speech on July 4 but canceled at the last minute. Carter retreated to Camp David, where he met with Americans from various backgrounds and spoke with them about the problems facing the country. At the time of the speech, the United States was struggling economically as a result of stagflation, which was having a huge impact on energy and fuel prices. Politically, the United States was in the midst of a resurgence of the Cold War as well as navigating rising tensions in the Middle East. Even though Carter never used that word, the speech was later dubbed the “malaise speech.”

📝 The New York Blackout of 1977

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

The teacher should project document A on a screen in front of the class.

II. Exploration (30 min)

Students will examine documents C–G and answer the analysis questions that accompany them.

III. Application (10 min)

Students will then get back together with the partner they worked with on the warm-up and compare answers. The teacher should move from group to group at this stage to ensure students’ analysis is accurate.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (25 min)

Students will be imagining themselves as one of the stakeholders in the wake of the New York blackout. Once they have chosen their role, they will write a response to the prompt.

📝 Vietnam War DBQ

📝 Unit 7 Civics Connection: Modern Liberalism, Limited Government, and Rights

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

Have students define the terms “limited government,” “inalienable/natural rights,” “positive rights,” “classical liberalism,” and “modern liberalism” in their own words to the best of their ability. Allow them to use **Handout A** if necessary, depending on their familiarity with constitutional principles. A full list of principles and virtues is provided in **Handout D**.

II. Exploration (20 min)

Have students read **Handout B: Natural Rights and Positive Rights in History**. Assign the readings as best fits your classroom situation (small groups or individually). Students should complete the graphic organizer in **Handout C: Natural Rights and Positive Rights in History Graphic Organizer** by selecting passage(s) from each text that support whether natural or positive rights are being discussed.

III. Application (15 min)

Depending on the method you used to have students do the initial reading and analysis, conduct a discussion that allows students to consider all the documents and share their responses.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Have students write a response that answers the lesson’s Guiding Question: To what extent did modern liberalism adhere to the principle of a limited government protecting natural/inalienable rights?

✏ Unit 7 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

1980–Present

1980–Present

📎 Inquiry Organizer

📖 Chapter 16 Introductory Essay: 1980–Present

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the context in which the United States faced international and domestic challenges after 1980
* Explain the causes and effects of domestic and international migration over time
* Explain the relative significance of the effects of change in the period after 1980 on American national identity

Introduction

Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, decisively defeating incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and independent candidate John Anderson and bringing a Republican Senate to Washington on his coattails. Reagan was reelected in a 49-state landslide in 1984, and his vice president, George H. W. Bush, won a solid victory in 1988 by promising to continue Reagan’s policies. The result was the crafting of domestic and foreign policies including smaller government, lower taxes, and a stronger national defense that the conservative movement had sought since the 1960s.

The Conservative Movement and Reaganomics

Reagan’s victory represented a long-term triumph for the conservative movement, which had grown more sophisticated and more powerful since Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential run in 1964. In his campaign, Reagan proposed limiting government, reducing the rate of growth of domestic spending, cutting taxes, and scaling back federal regulation of the economy. He advocated the conservative belief that dependence on welfare was damaging families, discouraging work, and inadvertently trapping people in poverty. He also argued for states’ rights in a federal system and for strict construction of the Constitution. His Cold War foreign policy was predicated on “peace through strength,” promising to rebuild American military power and stop Soviet aggression around the world. (See the Comparing Presidential Campaign Advertising 1964–1980 Lesson.)

Reagan’s Cold War Foreign Policy

At the same time, Reagan followed a foreign policy of “peace through strength,” supporting big increases in the defense budget and the deployment of new weapons systems. He presided over the largest peacetime defense budget in history—approximately \$220 billion in 1981 and increasing at 7 percent annually—which greatly enhanced American military readiness and modernization but contributed to growing federal deficits. He also embraced a research program called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), intended to develop a defense against nuclear missiles. The Soviets objected strongly to SDI, but Reagan persisted, arguing for the moral superiority of a free society against Soviet totalitarianism. In 1983, he made a speech in which he indicted the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” and he frequently predicted that communism was doomed to collapse because of its economic inefficiency and denial of basic human freedom. Whereas previous administrations had embraced détente, Reagan rejected that idea and instead pursued policies to facilitate the collapse of communism.

The 1980s Economy and Society

In the 1980s, the economy returned to rates of growth that had been common before the oil shock of 1973. The digital revolution in computers began, and the process of deindustrialization—the transition in employment from industry to the service sector—continued. Partly because many American industrial jobs went overseas to countries with cheaper labor, the proportion of American workers in labor unions declined significantly, changing the dynamics of labor-management relations. Moreover, many industrial towns across the United States were hit hard by widespread unemployment. At the same time, women joined the workforce in rapidly increasing numbers and entered new fields. A new and much-satirized archetype emerged, the “yuppie” (young urban professional), as the symbol of what critics saw as a new era of greed. Others saw the era differently, as a rebirth of freedom and opportunity. (See the Tech Giants: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Narrative.)

The Presidency of Bill Clinton

The string of consecutive Republican presidential victories ended in 1992 when Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, running on a moderate platform as a “New Democrat,” defeated George H. W. Bush’s bid for reelection. Bush was hurt by a short recession, by a tax increase that broke a 1988 campaign pledge, and, ironically, by the successful end of the Cold War, which reduced the importance of foreign policy, his strong suit. Ready for a change, some voters looked for a populist outsider who seemed to represent the people more closely than either political party. As a result, they gave nearly one in five votes to independent candidate H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texan who was a populist outsider. Whether Perot drew more votes from Bush or Clinton remains a matter for debate, but Clinton, who projected empathy and optimism, won the election with 43 percent of the popular vote. (See The 1992 Presidential Election and the Rise of Democratic Populism Narrative.)

George W. Bush and a Changing World

George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of George H. W. Bush, ran for president in a hotly contested 2000 race against Vice President Al Gore. After two recounts and intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court in *Bush v. Gore* (2000), Bush was declared the winner in the decisive state of Florida, giving him the required majority in the Electoral College. Bush had run on a theme of “compassionate conservatism.” As president, he combined traditionally liberal and conservative domestic policies, including a large tax cut, a major expansion of federal involvement in elementary and secondary education through the No Child Left Behind Act, and an expansion of Medicare to include prescription drug coverage. He also defended traditional marriage and made an unsuccessful proposal to privatize Social Security by establishing personal accounts for workers.

The Great Recession and the Presidency of Barack Obama

Democrats regained control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, and in 2008, U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected the first African American president. Obama won the election because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq and the early suffering caused by the recession. Although he withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq as promised during the campaign, Obama returned U.S. military forces there when a new terrorist threat, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), swept toward Baghdad in 2014.

🔎 Ronald Reagan and Supply-Side Economics

🔎 The Iran-Contra Affair

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the end of the Cold War and its legacy

🔎 The Space Shuttle Program and the <i> Challenger</i>  Disaster

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of economic and technological change over time

🔎 Rodney King and the Los Angeles Race Riots

🔎 The 1992 Presidential Election and the Rise of Democratic Populism

🔎 Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the domestic and international challenges the United States has faced in the 21st century

🔎 The USA PATRIOT Act

🔎 Fossil Fuels, Foreign Policy, and Climate Change

🔎 Tech Giants: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

📍 “Tear Down This Wall”: Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War

📍 U.S. Foreign Policy in Somalia and Rwanda

📍 U.S. Military Intervention in Afghanistan

Abstract:
By the end of this section, you will:
* Explain the causes and effects of the end of the Cold War and its legacy
* Explain the causes and effects of the domestic and international challenges the United States has faced in the 21st century

💬 Has Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” Thesis Been Proven Correct?

Issue on the Table

Have events since the end of the Cold War proven the ideas of American political scientist Francis Fukuyama correct that liberal democracy will inevitably continue to spread and be the predominant form of government around the world? Or has Fukuyama’s thesis been proven incorrect?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama brilliantly argued in a controversial 1989 article, “The End of History?,” that humankind would continue to evolve politically until each state reached its end, the highest form of human society—Western liberal democracy.

Claim B

In 1989, as the Cold War was coming to an end, Francis Fukuyama made the striking claim that humanity was experiencing the end of history “or the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Liberalism had triumphed over its principal ideological antagonists, including communism and fascism. With the end of “the worldwide ideological struggle [of the Cold War],” all that remained, he lamented, were uninspiring and prosaic tasks—“the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.”

💬 Does the Threat of Terrorism Justify Increased Surveillance?

Issue on the Table

Does the threat of terrorist activity justify the increase in surveillance in the post-9/11 world, or does such surveillance unduly infringe upon individual civil liberties?

Instructions

Claim A

The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, shook the nation and demonstrated that the United States must wake up and better guard its citizens against a similar attack. The September 11 attacks stole the lives of 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 others in the immediate aftermath. In addition, many Americans, including first responders, died of respiratory and other illnesses contracted during the search-and-rescue efforts conducted in the wake of the attacks. In addition to the lives lost, the terror attacks caused more than \$10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.

Claim B

Terrorist threats do not justify infringing on individual freedom and privacy rights, nor do they justify the relaxation of legal checks on surveillance. The U.S. Constitution includes numerous protections of civil rights and liberties, from the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech to the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable government searches and seizures. Yet, in times of crisis, freedom and privacy are routinely sacrificed in the name of greater security. In practice, allowing the government expanded investigatory powers makes it easier for government agencies to spy on ordinary Americans and turns citizens into suspects whose private lives are open to government surveillance and scrutiny. The danger is twofold. First, innocent Americans can mistakenly become government targets and even be wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit. Second, the government may misuse its authority by targeting citizens for their political or religious views.

💬 Was the Invasion of Iraq Justified?

Issue on the Table

Was the preemptive invasion of Iraq justified by the available intelligence related to the War on Terror and the suspicion of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)?

Instructions

Claim A

The preemptive invasion of Iraq was justified at the time. Furthermore, although several plausible reasons were given at the time to defend the invasion—some of which were ultimately unfounded—in retrospect, the invasion can still be considered a success and a model for American and allied military intervention around the world. The simple fact is that brutal, dictatorial regimes, such as the one in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, that commit human rights abuses against their own people and invade other nations in defiance of international law and global demands for change must be stopped at all costs. And although war should always be a last resort, it is morally justifiable to prevent genocide.

Claim B

No, the preemptive invasion of Iraq was not justified at the time by the intelligence related to the War on Terror or by the suspicion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq was based on false premises, the gross exaggeration of the threat posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and incorrect claims about the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

💬 Is Affirmative Action Justified?

Issue on the Table

Are affirmative action policies justified to ensure opportunities for traditionally underrepresented groups? Or do they result in engineered outcomes that result in discriminatory policies toward other groups?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the questions, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Claim A

There is no doubt the United States has made great progress over its history with regard to equality. Yet enormous inequalities persist. Twenty-four percent of African Americans and 21 percent of Latinos live below the poverty line. By contrast, only 9 percent of whites do. Forty percent of African American children live in poverty compared with only 14 percent of white children. Moreover, African American men are incarcerated at the rate of more than three per 100 citizens. This rate is four times the national average.

Claim B

Past discrimination against certain minority groups does not justify present discrimination against non-minorities. Righting a wrong with another wrong is never justified. Although past discrimination against minorities is a historical fact, contemporary Americans do not bear the responsibility for, nor should they be disadvantaged or punished because of, the deeds of past generations. Furthermore, affirmative action policies harm those they are purported to help. They place a cloud of suspicion over all persons from the class that is presumed to benefit. People may view minorities at school or work as inferior and engender the notion that they are only there because of a helping hand, regardless of whether the minority benefited from an affirmative action policy or not. Affirmative action stamps minorities with a badge of inferiority, stigmatizing them in the eyes of others. An alternative solution that neither stigmatizes nor harms is needed to ensure that traditionally underrepresented communities have a place in schools and the workplace.

💬 Is It in the Interest of the United States to Maintain Its International Obligations?

Issue on the Table

Should the United States continue to exercise its power to act as the most powerful nation on earth to be a stabilizing force on the world stage? Or has the United States overexerted its influence and needs to look to international bodies to take more of a role?

Instructions

Claim A

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed only two years after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and the world changed dramatically. The 50-year Cold War struggle between the world’s two superpowers ended peacefully. American policymakers had to decide what principles would guide U.S. foreign policy and how to exercise its power when faced with the new global paradigm.

Claim B

The global threat landscape is not the same as it was during the Cold War, when two nuclear superpowers squared off, let alone in the wake of the World Wars, which devastated once-powerful nations. We now live in a multipolar environment and the sources of the threats are diverse and include Islamist terrorists, rogue nations, and revanchist nuclear superpowers. They threaten the global economy and the security of all nations, not merely the United States.

✒ Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on the <i> Challenger</i>  Disaster, January 28, 1986

Introduction

Once the “space race” began between the United States and the Soviet Union, people became fascinated with the idea of traveling to outer space. Many young people in the 1960s and 1970s wanted to be astronauts when they grew up. For years, the world watched live as rockets from the Soviet Union and the United States took flight. By the 1980s, space travel seemed almost effortless and the early failures of the space program were easily forgotten. However, in January 1986, the space shuttle *Challenger* exploded right after liftoff, killing all seven crew members. The *Challenger* disaster was unique in several ways. It had been years since the United States had suffered a major setback in the space race. In addition, a public school teacher was on the shuttle, and many children across the country watched the explosion occur live on TV in their classrooms. Later that day, President Reagan postponed his State of the Union address and instead gave a short speech to the nation to commemorate the loss of the astronauts.

✒ Ronald Reagan, “Tear Down this Wall” Speech, June 12, 1987

Introduction

In June 1987, President Ronald Reagan visited West Germany and saw the Berlin Wall in person. Like many other Americans, Reagan viewed the wall as evidence of the Soviet Union’s totalitarianism and its efforts to keep people trapped in an oppressive system. Reagan’s words at the Berlin Wall demonstrated support for the many people living behind the “Iron Curtain” under Soviet puppet governments—people who would rise up in the next few years to topple communism. In 1989, Germans tore the Berlin Wall down.

✒ Herblock, Cartoons of Ronald Reagan, 1984–1987

Introduction

Herbert Block was an American cartoonist who created works from 1927 until his death in 2001 under the name Herblock. Throughout his career, Block lampooned figures such as Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon for their political beliefs and conduct while holding office. When Ronald Reagan took office, the liberal-leaning cartoonist found plenty that he disagreed with the new president on. Block developed a number of cartoons throughout Reagan’s tenure in which he criticized the president’s policies, proposals, and actions, including so-called Reaganomics, Star Wars, and the Iran-Contra Affair.

✒ AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1987

Introduction

In the early 1980s, a mysterious and deadly illness came to the public’s attention. In 1982, the *New York Times* published an article about a new immune system disorder that had affected 335 people, killing 136. Little was understood about this disease. Many incorrectly believed the illness was exclusive to gay men. The Reagan administration did little to address the epidemic, and those afflicted suffered not only from illness but also by societal stigma. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was created in 1985 as a memorial for those who had succumbed to the new disease. Each of the memorial panels on the quilt measures 3 by 6 feet, the size of an average grave, and most honor a particular person who died of AIDS. The quilt was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987. The quilt returned to Washington in 1988, 1989, 1992, and 1996, each time growing larger. To date, the quilt memorializes more than 94,000 people who have died of the disease.

✒ Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, 1989

Introduction

The collapse of the Soviet Union near the end of the twentieth century marked the beginning of a new era in global affairs. Whereas the world had been separated into two distinct and diametrically opposed blocs—Western democratic capitalism and Soviet communism—during the Cold War, the U.S. “victory” and the end of the Cold War left the United States as the sole superpower in the early 1990s. The fall of the Soviet Union did not occur immediately, and the slow breakup of the once-powerful nation allowed intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama, who worked in the U.S. State Department, to speculate on which new world order would replace the one that existed during the Cold War.

✒ George H. W. Bush, Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 1991

Introduction

In 1991, the United States stood as an uncontested global leader. The Soviet Union, long an equal power to the United States, was slowly collapsing, and its leaders had begun initiating economic and political reforms to create greater freedom for their citizens. The U.S. government had proven it could coordinate the world to oppose threats to the liberal world order when it led a coalition of 35 nations to defeat Iraq in early 1991 after Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait. President George H. W. Bush gave the following speech to the U.N. General Assembly to reflect on this new, post–Cold War world.

✒ Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning,” January 20, 1993

Introduction

Maya Angelou was a celebrated author and poet, best known for her seven autobiographies. Angelou also worked as a civil rights activist with both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; at other times in her life she worked as a journalist, professor and historian, playwright, producer, director, and actress. In 1993, Angelou delivered her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton. Only two other poets have written and recited poetry for a presidential inaugural: Robert Frost in 1960 at the inauguration of President Kennedy and Richard Blanco at the 2013 inauguration of President Obama. Angelou remains the only woman and the only African American to have held such an honor. Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of Morning” is written in free verse and contains many influences, including the poetry of Walt Whitman (see the Chapter 7 Walt Whitman, *Leaves of Grass*, 1855 Primary Source), Negro spirituals (see the Chapter 7 Negro Spirituals Primary Source), and the music of Bob Dylan. The poem uses the image of a rock, river, and tree to put forth a message of inclusiveness and hope.

✒ Republican House Representatives, “Republican Contract with America,” 1994

Introduction

From 1955 to 1995, the Democratic Party held a continuous majority in the House of Representatives. During this time, the federal government grew substantially, leading some critics to argue it was becoming more and more out of touch with the people it was designed to represent. In the lead-up to the 1994 election, Republican congressmen Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey wrote the “Contract with America” to outline the policy actions their party would take if they gained a majority in the House. All but two sitting Republicans in the House and all nonincumbent Republican candidates signed the statement. The document proved to be a persuasive piece of campaign propaganda: In November of that year, the Republicans made huge gains in Congress and took control of the House of Representatives.

✒ Barack Obama, Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004

Introduction

The 2004 presidential election pitted incumbent Republican president George W. Bush against John Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. At the Democratic National Convention in July, Barack Obama, a relatively unknown candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, gave the keynote address and attracted national attention. In his speech, Obama told the story of his family and urged the nation to elect Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry lost the election to President George W. Bush, but Obama won a seat in the Senate. Senator Obama’s star continued to rise, culminating in his receiving the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. President Obama served two terms from January 2009 to January 2017.

✒ <i> New Yorker</i>  Covers, 2001–2011 (Reflections on 9/11)

Introduction

Founded in 1925, the *New Yorker* is weekly magazine well known for its illustrated covers commenting on current events. The *New Yorker* features journalism, commentary, cartoons, and literary works and is read across the United States and internationally. After the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan in 2001, the *New Yorker* used its cover illustrations to commemorate the attack itself and comment on its effects.

📝 Comparing Presidential Campaign Advertising 1964–1980

I. Warm-Up Activity (20 min)

In this activity, students will view two presidential TV spots from the 1964 campaign. They will analyze the propaganda messages contained in them.

II. Exploration (40 min)

Students will examine campaign materials from two key elections of the twentieth century, 1964 and 1980. Using **Handout B: Feeding Cold War Fears in the 1964 campaign** and **Handout C: The Reagan Revolution,** students will watch and read a selection of resources and answer analysis questions about their content, imaging, and message. Teachers may wish to distribute these “handouts” electronically, as that would work most efficiently for accessing the resources.

III. Application (20 min)

Students will now work in pairs, or small groups. The pairs will share their answers to the questions on the resources and come to consensus on the answers. The teacher should move about the room from group to group, monitoring their discussion, ensuring the students are on task, and offering insight where the students are having difficulty.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (5–15 min)

Students will write a reflection essay on one of the following prompts. Whichever one they choose, they must cite specific details from at least three of the resources provided.

📝 Continuity and Change: Immigration in the United States

I. Warm-Up Activity (15 min)

II. Exploration (45 min)

III. Application (15 min)

Students will write a short reflection essay on how the political rhetoric of the time influenced the various waves of immigration reform. Their essay must cite at least three immigration laws and at least one primary source related to each of the laws they choose.

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Students will consider the historical record of immigration changes in the United States and reflect on the current challenges of immigration reform. Considering there has not been major reform in more than 30 years, they will speculate on what might be achievable today. In whatever product they choose, they should make at least two references to the documents that were read in this lesson. They will create one of the following products:

📝 Security, Liberty, and the USA PATRIOT Act

I. Warm-Up Activity (25 min)

II. Exploration (35 min)

III. Application (15 min)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (15 min)

Students will reflect on the arguments made by the ACLU in Handout C, while also considering what was read in Handouts A and B. Each student will then decide whether they agree with ACLU’s assertions. Then they will produce a product that expresses their conclusions. They must cite evidence from at least four of the provided documents in supporting their position. The choices of products may include:

📝 George Washington’s Foreign Policy: Comparisons across U.S. History

📝 Executive Power in Times of Crisis

📝 Cold War DBQ (1947–1989)

📝 Unit 8 Civics Connection

I. Warm-Up Activity (5–10 min)

II. Exploration (20–30 min)

III. Application (10–15 min)

IV. Conclusion and Assessment (10 min)

✏ Unit 8 Essay Activity

I. Warm-Up

II. Exploration

III. Application

IV. Conclusion

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States

Constitutional Amendments

The U.S. Bill of Rights (Amendments 1–10)

Federalist Papers #10 and #51

Federalist Paper #10: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

From the New York Packet.

Federalist Paper #51: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments

From the New York Packet.

U.S. Political Map

Electoral College Votes by State, 2012–2020

U.S. Topographical Map

United States Population Chart

U.S. Presidents

Selected Supreme Court Cases

Glossary

A

**abhorrence** feeling of hatred or disgust

B

**baby boom** a marked increase in the birth rate between 1946 and 1964

C

**cadre** group that shares the same beliefs or works together

D

**Darwinism** the theory developed by Charles Darwin that species evolve by natural selection (“survival of the fittest”)

E

**earthworks** an embankment made of soil, usually used as fortification

F

**factory system** a form of production in which workers operate machinery

G

**G.I. Bill of Rights** a law that created programs to aid servicemen returning from World War II

H

**habeas corpus** a law allowing a prisoner to petition for unlawful imprisonment and be brought to court to determine if the imprisonment is lawful

I

**Iberian** relating to the countries of Spain and Portugal

J

**Jeffersonian-Republicans** a political party led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; they favored strong states’ rights, farmers, and a relationship with France

K

***kachina*** an ancestral spirt from Pueblo Indian mythology

L

**laceration** deep cut in the skin

M

**macadam** small stones packed together with a binder like tar to create hard-surfaced roads

N

**napalm** a highly flammable jelly used in incendiary bombs and flamethrowers

O

***Obergefell v. Hodges* (2015)** a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment

P

**palpable** intense

Q

**Quaker** a Christian movement, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, that is devoted to peaceful principles

R

**racial covenant** contract between private individuals prohibiting the purchase, lease, or occupation of property by a particular group of people, usually African Americans

S

**salient** a bulge in battlefield lines

T

**tacit** implied without being said explicitly

U

**U-2 spy plane** reconnaissance aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency used to spy on the Soviet Union starting in the 1950s

V

**V-2 program** German program that created the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile

W

**War Hawks** Americans who favored war with Britain around 1812

X

**XYZ Affair** a diplomatic and political dispute between France and the United States from 1797 to 1798 that culminated in the Quasi-War

Y

**Yalta Summit** the meeting between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union after World War II to discuss the reorganization of Germany, a free Poland, the Soviet entry into the Pacific War, and Soviet participation in the United Nations