Lesson Plan Lewis and Clark: Exploring the Louisiana Purchase Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
Lesson Plan The History of the Supreme Court, 1787 to 1937 Government and Civics 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 According to the 1900 census, the population of the United States was then 76.3 million. Nearly 14 percent of the population—approximately 10.4 million people—was born outside of the United States. Drawn by America’s labor...
Lesson Plan The Gettysburg Address: Identifying Text, Context, and Subtext Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy 6, 7, 8, 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 Middle Passage, 1749 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Historians estimate that approximately 472,000 Africans were kidnapped and brought to the North American mainland between 1619 and 1860. Of these, nearly 18 percent died during the transatlantic voyage from Africa to the New World....
Spotlight on: Primary Source Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919 Government and Civics 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770 Art, World History 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ By the beginning of 1770, there were 4,000 British soldiers in Boston, a city with 15,000 inhabitants, and tensions were running high. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day laborers, apprentices, and merchant sailors began to pelt...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper: Sedition charges, 1815 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Even though the Sedition Act of 1798 had expired in 1801, individuals could still be charged with sedition. On January 20, 1815, Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper, publishers of the Massachusetts newspaper The Yankee , printed an article...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Sedition Act, 1798 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970 Government and Civics In September 1970, J. Edgar Hoover composed an open letter to American students detailing his view on civil unrest at the nation’s colleges and universities and warning against the elements he believed responsible. Hoover opened with...