Students examine the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass to discover how his skilled use of language painted a realistic portrait of slavery and removed some common misconceptions about slaves and their situation.

In this lesson, students analyze the factors that led to nativism at key points in American history and evaluate how nativist policies have affected various immigrant groups in the United States.

In this activity students analyze Theodor Kaufmann's 1867 painting On to Liberty. Students practice finding information and making inferences based on the painting by completing a graphic organizer. Then students read a descriptive paragraph of the painting, noting where the author has cited information from the painting and where the author has made inferences and drawn conclusions. Then students analyze another painting of a similar theme, Eastman Johnson's A Ride for Liberty. The activity concludes by asking students to synthesize what they have learned about the Civil War based on the painting. The activity may make a good culminating lesson about the Civil War or an introductory lesson on Reconstruction.

Students define the concept of manifest destiny, discuss how contemporary maps of the 1840s influenced United States expansion in the 1840s, and analyze the relationship between manifest destiny and democracy.

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "Manifest Destiny."

This lesson looks at ways that the ideology of Manifest Destiny expressed both national political objectives and the goals of ordinary men and women who settled the west. Students will explain the economic, political, racial, and religious roots of Manifest Destiny and analyze how the concept influenced the nation’s westward expansion. They will also understand the motivations and expectations of Americans who settled in the West.

This lesson uses Thomas Day as a focal point for students to learn about ways that free blacks attained their free status and “crafted freedom” for themselves and others through their craft and entrepreneurial skills, through political activities, through leveraging their social position and contacts, and through their art and creativity.

With this digital collection, students will examine documents that offer differing views of the Mississippi in the early part of the nineteenth century.

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "The Market Revolution."

In this activity, students listen to a historical narrative and analyze other primary and secondary sources in order to answer a series of questions.

Often when studying the Revolutionary War, we forget to acknowledge the important roles Africans and African Americans played, whether in fighting for either side of the war, or fighting for their own rights to freedom. Without including their pieces of the puzzle, the history we learn is incomplete. In this lesson, students will learn how Blacks were contributing to colonial society, making active choices to survive their bondage and striving to shape and control their own lives amidst the Patriots? struggle for political freedom.

This video portrays how the values, ideas, and actions of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson influenced relationships with Native Americans and directed the westward expansion of the United States. A panel of experts offer perspectives on these topics.

Explore the spatial patterns of Native American lands in 1819 and the decrease in size of those lands through the current Native American reservations.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

With this digital collection, students will review primary sources that develop the historical context for the debates over Africa and the slave trade. Students will consider the following questions as they review the documents: 1. How did eighteenth-century European and American writers portray Africans? How are these representations shaped by the writers’ own experiences and convictions? 2. What arguments did eighteenth-century writers make in support of and in opposition to the slave trade? How are these arguments shaped by each writer’s understanding of African civilization? 3. How does Olaudah Equiano contribute to these debates? How does he portray his own experiences of slavery and freedom? How does he define his identity as African, British, and Christian?

Students use primary source evidence to debate and answer the question: Who freed the slaves? They use textual evidence to support claims and engage in discussion that brings to light multiple perspectives.

In this activity, students listen to a historical narrative and analyze other primary and secondary sources in order to answer a series of questions.

In this exercise, students examine two different versions of the song known as "Dixie," one written in 1859, just before the Civil War, and one written in 1861, just after the start of the Civil War. Students read the lyrics for each version, listen to the songs, and then answer the following questions: What do you notice about the lyrics and the musical qualities of the songs? What questions do you want to ask about the lyrics and the musical qualities of the songs? After discussing these questions, students learn more about the historical context of sectionalism and the Civil War and draw conclusions about how people at the time thought about the South. (This activity is a professional development module that could be modified to serve as an activity for students.)

In this activity, students examine the lyrics from two versions of the song "John Brown's Body" or "The John Brown Song." Throughout the course of the Civil War, versions of this song with different lyrics were created and published. First, students read two versions of the song, one published early in the war and one published several years later, and answer the following questions: What do you notice about the song lyrics? What questions do you want to ask about the song lyrics? After discussing these questions, students learn more about the historical context of the Civil War and draw conclusions about how Northern views of the Civil War changed in the time between the two versions. (This activity is a professional development module that could be modified to serve as an activity for students.)

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.)

In this lesson, students will analyze multiple sources to write an extended response evaluating the effectiveness of the federal government's attempts to utilize the Freedmen's Bureau to implement and enforce the "Reconstruction Amendments" in the south between the years of 1865-1877.