Spotlight on: Primary Source An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780 Economics During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...
Lesson Plan Apprenticeship and Indentured Servitude: Contract Labor in the British Colonies 5, 6, 7, 8 Click here to download this three-lesson unit. About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Benedict Arnold’s 1780 treason and the execution of John Andre recalled, 1823 During the American Revolution, the discovery of General Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British was a deeply shocking revelation. In a memoir written some forty years after the war, William North, an aide-de...
Lesson Plan Black Women and the American Revolution 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this lesson plan.
Spotlight on: Primary Source Calling out the militia after Lexington and Concord, 1775 On the night of April 18, 1775, 700 British soldiers began to march toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize and destroy arms the American patriots had stored there. Warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen confronted and...
Lesson Plan Colonial Pennsylvania and the Paxton Massacre, 1763 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this four-lesson unit. About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Lesson Plan Colonists Divided: A Revolution and a Civil War Government and Civics 6, 7, 8 Background The Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act were just a few of the many policies Great Britain enacted in the British North American colonies in the eighteenth century. To many...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Declaration of Independence, 1776 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ During the spring of 1776, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans—including New York mechanics, Pennsylvania militiamen, and South Carolina grand juries—adopted resolutions endorsing independence. These resolutions...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Dragging cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, 1775 Geography On March 17, 1776, George Washington stood on Dorchester Heights alongside fifty-nine captured cannon high above the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and watched as British troops peacefully evacuated the city after an eleven-month...