Lesson Plan Black Women and the American Revolution 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this lesson plan.
Lesson Plan What Does Liberty Look Like? Government and Civics " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786 Economics, Government and Civics 9 Of the nine presidents who were slaveholders, only George Washington freed all his own slaves upon his death. Before the Revolution, Washington, like most White Americans, took slavery for granted. At the time of the Revolution, one...
Lesson Plan Our New Country Needs New Money: Colonial Money Simulation Economics K, 1, 2, 3 There certainly can’t be a greater Grievance to a Traveler, from one Colony to another than the different values their Paper Money bears. —an English visitor, ca.1742 Introduction Students use different kinds of paper money to...
Lesson Plan The Battle over the Bank: Hamilton v. Jefferson Government and Civics 6, 7, 8 Background After months of battling and compromises, the US Constitution was finally sent to Congress by the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. Through the ratification process and the first decade under the new...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Henry Knox on the British invasion of New York, 1776 When twenty-six-year-old Henry Knox, the Continental Army’s artillery commander, penned this letter to his wife, Lucy, on July 8, 1776, patriot morale was at a low point. The summer of 1776 was a particularly hard time as word of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Alexander Hamilton’s "gloomy" view of the American Revolution, 1780 Government and Civics By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 1791 Economics, Government and Civics When George Washington became president in 1789, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as his secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton’s vision for the economic foundation of the United States included three main programs: 1) the federal...
Lesson Plan "Contagious Liberty": Women in the Revolutionary Age Government and Civics Background The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these...
Spotlight on: Primary Source George Washington’s First Inaugural Address, 1789 Government and Civics, Literature After officially enacting the newly ratified US Constitution in September 1788, the Confederation Congress scheduled the first inauguration for March 1789. However, bad weather delayed many congressmen from arriving in the national...
Lesson Plan The National Bank Debate Economics, Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Objective This lesson is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794 Economics, Government and Civics In 1791, the federal government imposed a tax on distilled spirits to pay off the nation’s debts from the American Revolution. The tax, which was payable only in cash, was particularly hard on small frontier farmers, who bartered and...
Lesson Plan How Hamilton Solved the Economic Problems Facing the United States Economics, Government and Civics 5, 6, 7, 8 Lesson Overview In this lesson students will develop an understanding of the economic challenges facing the newly independent United States. Those challenges included the lack of a national currency, the national government’s...