Background Crates full of rice slip and slide across the floorboards as the ship rocks back and forth. The ship looks insignificant in the vastness of the ocean. Air scented with tobacco wafts through the cracks in the ceiling of the hold. A small cry breaks with the crashing of the waves as child treated like another barrel or crate full of cargo wonders about his fate. These are the sights, smells, and sounds of the transatlantic trading routes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Highly profitable triangular trade routes were established between Europe, Africa, and...

Background Wampanoags Much of what is known about early Wampanoag history comes from archaeological evidence, the Wampanoag oral tradition (much of which has been lost), and documents created by seventeenth-century English colonists. The Wampanoag people have lived in southeastern New England for thousands of years. In 1600 there were as many as 12,000 Wampanoag who lived in forty villages. Both oral tradition and archaeological evidence suggest that Indigenous peoples lived in the area for 10,000 years. Wampanoag means “People of the Dawn” in the Algonquian language. There...

Background George Mortimer Pullman was an influential industrialist of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company. His innovations brought comfort and luxury to railroad travel in the 1800s with the introduction of sleeping cars, dining cars, and parlor cars. Like other industrialists of the period Pullman built a company town near his factory to accommodate his workers’ housing needs. He advertised it as a model community which offered his workers modern amenities in a beautiful setting. By 1890, the Pullman Palace Car Company was operating 2,135...

Essential Question To what extent have the conditions of American workers improved over the past 100 years? Background After the Civil War, the United States witnessed an accelerating movement of people westward, a rapidly increasing number of immigrants, and the large growth of urban areas. Along with these trends, the massive changes in how corporations were organized and operated and the growth of the labor movement during this period wrought significant changes in American life. The right to organize, to bargain for wages and working conditions, the equitable distribution...

Background Early European explorers to the Americas likely experienced emotions including awe at the vast “new” environment, amazement at meeting “others,” the thrill of the unknown, concern for personal safety, desire for personal reward, and longing for their homeland and those left behind. Written and pictorial records attributed to Europeans provide the bulk of the records of these early travels. European impressions of Native peoples as well as Native impressions of Europeans are frequently framed in the narratives of the explorers. Examination of these records indicates...

Aim What can the statistics tell us about the rise and fall of the second two-party system? How did the breakdown of this system contribute to the onset of the Civil War? Overview The purpose of this lesson is to examine the antebellum era through the lens of elections and electoral politics. Although an “era of good feeling” had followed the War of 1812, signs of political dissension were appearing as early as the presidential election of 1824. The issues contested in elections and debated in the legislative sessions from 1824 to 1861 were critical ones: the direction that the...

Historical Background American Indians (First Nations in Canada) constructed homes to conform to their needs and environment. Housing for some tribal groups was permanent, while other residences reflected the need to relocate, often to adjust for a harvest season or to follow a source of food. Housing styles reflected these needs. Significance Native American housing is frequently assumed to be represented by one or two well-known styles such as the teepee or pueblo. While these do reflect distinct tribal designs, they are not all inclusive and students should be exposed to a...

Introduction When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, his experience in politics and government included serving in the Illinois legislature and the US House of Representatives. He had also studied law and was licensed to practice law in Illinois at age twenty-seven. This seems like scant experience for a man who would lead a country through its greatest internal challenge. However, Lincoln found a way to draw on his life experience and his professional knowledge to lead the nation with an astuteness and skill that might have escaped a more...

Historical Background As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks particularly, coupled with the impact of mechanization on agricultural practices, challenged the financial stability of American farmers in ways never before experienced. The late 1860s saw the birth of the Grange (a.k.a. the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry), an organization dedicated to the social and political uplift of farmers. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, farmers organized collectively, at...

Introduction The Cold War is the term for the rivalry between the two blocs of contending states that emerged following the Second World War. It was a series of confrontations played out on the world stage between the non-Communist states, led by the United States and Great Britain, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union. In 1946 the former prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, gave a speech in Missouri foreshadowing the divide between East and West using the metaphor of an "iron curtain." The reality of this divide was evidenced in Germany in Berlin in 1961....