In this lesson, students will complete a research assignment on a particular president. They will use the Library of Congress website to find the inaugural address of the president and then use the speech and additional research to identify accomplishments that the president made while in office.

In this exercise, students examine advertisements for runaway slaves and servants from the Virginia Gazette in the mid-1700s and ask the following questions: What do you notice about this advertisement? What questions do you want to ask about this advertisement? After discussing these questions, and learning more about the historical context of slavery and completing a spreadsheet, students draw conclusions about the advertisements and about slavery in the 18th century. (This activity is a professional development module that could be modified to serve as an activity for students.)

Through this unit, students will understand the events and tensions that fractured the country, and will also know the course of the war and how it came to an end. The Reconstruction unit will begin with the end of the war and its immediate aftermath, including President Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction and his assassination. Students will then examine President Johnson’s plan and how his policies were implemented in the South. Students will also consider the changes in the South brought about by the 13th Amendment and the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Another major topic will be the policies enacted by the Radical Republicans during Congressional Reconstruction. Students will also learn about the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and examine their impact on freedom and equality for African -Americans. After these social and political changes have been considered, the unit will move onto how Reconstruction came to a close in 1877, and much of the period’s progress was reversed in the following years. To culminate the unit, students will evaluate the successes and failures of the Reconstruction period by considering its enduring legacy.

In this lesson, students examine images of life in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. As they view the images, students will make a list of the problems that the U.S. faced and then share their lists. Students will also review and evaluate the Presidential Reconstruction plan.

Students examine early developments of Reconstruction including the 13th Amendment and the Freedman's Bureau. Students will consider the successes of the Freedman's Bureau as well as the ongoing struggles with labor relations, violence, and Black Codes.

In this lesson, students examine the period of Reconstruction that was led by the Radical Republicans by identifying the leaders and the laws that were passed. They will also understand how the provisions of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution increased freedom and equality for African Americans.

In this lesson, students explore how life changed for southerners, especially for African Americans during Reconstruction. They will examine reforms that were enacted by state legislatures during this period and identify the effects of the 14th and 15th amendments.

In this lesson, students investigate the reasons that Reconstruction ended. They will explain the Amnesty Act and the Compromise of 1877. They will also understand how events in this period influenced later events associated with the civil rights movement.

In this lesson, students evaluate the successes and failures of Reconstruction and then create a museum exhibit compiling items they have used during the unit of study.

With this digital collection, students will examine documents that explore representations of the American Revolution from its earliest moments through the 125 years that followed. The documents include visual representations—maps, illustrations—as well as a variety of written texts—political, literary, musical—created by people of different social status for different audiences. Taken together, these documents encourage students to think in new ways about the history and meaning of the Revolution. Students will consider the following questions as they review the documents: 1. How did people interpret the events of the Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? 2. How did the meaning of the Revolution change over time? 3. What conflicts or contradictions exist between different representations of the Revolution? 4. What are the reasons for the differences between various accounts of the Revolution?

In this lesson, students will list some tea party protests other than the Boston Tea Party, state some possible reasons behind the tea protests, and explain the connection between the Boston Tea Party, other tea parties, and events that preceded and followed them.

In this assignment students will use the online version of the Pennsylvania Gazette to build a database of information about runaways, those who sought freedom. Using this collected information, they will then try to draw useful conclusions about the people on whose labor the revolution depended. Students will write a three page analysis of the data.

In this lesson, students learn about Sam Houston, a leader who sought practical solutions to the problems of his time (Civil War era). Discussion questions are provided. In an associated activity, students will write an essay based on whether they think Sam Houston would have been a better choice for president in 1860.

Students compare an excerpt of a WPA interview with an ex-slave with a more famous statement by Frederick Douglass to arrive at their own interpretations of slave resistance. This lesson is designed to work with the film Doing As They Can, but parts of it can be completed without the film.

In this lesson, students review Lincoln's main political views and how they were addressed in his major speeches. A set of discussion questions is provided. In an associated activity, students will write and deliver a speech explaining the most important things about American democracy.

With this digital collection, students will examine documents that bring together arguments for emancipation written before, during, and after the Civil War. The collection allows students to trace the evolution of abolitionist arguments as well as to examine conflicts among writers over what emancipation would entail. Students will keep the following questions in mind as they review the documents: 1. What arguments did writers make before the Civil War for the abolition of slavery? How did they frame their appeals in moral, social, political, and economic terms? 2. How did the war’s purpose shift from “saving the union” to destroying slavery? 3. What would freedom mean for former slaves, for Southern society, and for the nation as a whole, according to various writers both before and after the war?

This lesson will focus on the views of the founders as expressed in primary documents from their own time and in their own words. Students will see that many of the major founders opposed slavery as contrary to the principles of the American Revolution.

In this activity, students view and analyze primary source documents in order to answer a series of questions about opposing views on slavery.

Was the American Revolution inevitable? This lesson is designed to help students understand the transition to armed resistance and the contradiction in the Americans' rhetoric about slavery through the examination of a series of documents. While it is designed to be conducted over a several-day period, teachers with time constraints can choose to utilize only one of the documents to illustrate the patriots' responses to the actions of the British.

In this lesson, students analyze a primary source document from the 1824 election. In an extension activity, students will compose letters asking the congressional representatives their opinions on the effectiveness and necessity of the present Electoral College system.