UNIT 3

UNIT 3: 1754-1800 – The American Pageant chapters 5-10; Don’t Know Much About History pages 41-100; A Patriot's History of the United States pages 54-152.

 

Content: Colonial society before the war for independence; colonial rivalries; the Seven Years War; pirates and other democrats; role of women before, during, and after 1776; Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the rise of political parties, national identity; work and labor (free and unfree); regional economical differences.

Key Concepts

3.1: Britain’s victory over France in the imperial struggle for North America led to new conflicts among the British government, the North American colonists and American Indians, culminating in the creation of a new nations, the United States.

3.2: In the late eighteenth century, new experiments with democratic ideas and republican forms of government, as well as other new religious, economic and cultural ideas, challenged traditional imperial systems across the Atlantic World.

3.3: Migration within North America, cooperative interactions and competitions for resources raised questions about boundaries and policies, intensified conflicts among peoples and nations, and led to contests over the creation of a multiethnic, multiracial national identity.

Activities:

History Log – notes and short answer writings based on readings.

Primary Source Analysis: Students will read and analysis the following – Map of Proclamation of 1763, Speeches at Fort Pitt by Tecumseh, Join or Die Cartoon, Common Sense, Declaration of Independence, Letters, Proclamation and Paintings surrounding the Saratoga Campaign (Arnold, Burgoyne, Jane McCrea and others), The Articles of Confederation, Federalist #45, The Constitution, Washington’s Farewell Address, map of Northwest Ordinance/Slavery abolition, two artists contrasting views of the Boston Massacre, diagram of Hamilton’s Financial Plan, Abigail Adams Letters to John Adams, Jefferson’s First Inaugural.

Drawing on primary sources, students engage in a debate over the question, “Did the Revolution assert British rights or did it create an American national identity?”

Viewpoints: Students will read “The War for Independence was Not a Social Revolution” by Howard Zinn and “The War for Independence was a Social Revolution” by Gordon S. Wood.  Using these articles as well as the primary documents from the period, students will write an essay responding to the following: Based on the arguments provided by Zinn and Wood as well as the primary source documents, to what extent did the American Revolution fundamentally change society?  In your answer, be sure to address the political, economic, and social effects of the Revolution in the period from 1775 to 1800.

Students will research and a list of causes of both Shay’s Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion.  Then students will write a short analysis of the significant of both events as a link between the American Revolution and the creation of a new nation. 

Students will list 10 events that led directly to the Revolution.  Students will defend their choices, the pick the one event that made the Revolution inevitable.

Six Degrees of Separation: 1607 to 1800.

Unit Exam – multiple choice, short answer questions, long essay, document-based essay.

During this unit students will discuss possible answers to the following essential questions:

Identity: How did different social group identities evolve during the revolutionary struggle?  How did leaders of the new United States attempt to form a national identity?

Work, Exchange, and Technology: How did the newly independent United States attempt to formulate a national economy?

Peopling: How did the revolutionary struggle and its aftermath reorient white-American Indian relations and affect subsequent population movements?

Politics and Power: How did the ideology behind the revolution affect power relationships between different ethnic, racial, and social groups?

America in the World: How did the revolution become an international conflict involving competing European and American powers?

Environment and Geography: How did the geographical and environment characteristics of regions open up to white settlements after 1763 affect their subsequent development?

Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture: Why did the patriot cause spread so quickly among the colonists after 1763?  How did the republican ideals of the revolutionary cause affect the nation’s political culture after independence?