Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. But political parties did form in the United States, with their beginnings in Washington's cabinet.

How did Abraham Lincoln understand the relationship between principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution?

Students review the contents of the War Message and consider what documents might be useful in making further analyses of the text.

The web of maritime connections between Western Europe, western and central Africa, and the Americas that made up the Atlantic world is the focus of this section of "On the Water: Stories from Maritime America", an online exhibition from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Students will learn how Atlantic-based trade shaped modern world history and life in America. Topics covered are the tobacco and sugar trades, the Middle Passage and the transatlantic slave trade, and the piracy that plagued the Caribbean Sea and North American coast during this period.

Students learn about the general history and culture of American Indians from a present-day perspective. This activity has students discovering the names and locations of the eight state-recognized tribes in North Carolina.

American author Pearl S. Buck spent most of her life in China. She returned to America in 1934, "an immigrant among immigrants"¦in my native land." In this lesson, students will explore American attitudes toward immigration in the 1930s through Pearl S. Buck's essay, "On Discovering America." They will explore the meaning of the term "American" in this context and look at how the media portrayed immigrants.

Trace the elements of history, literature, polemic, and autobiography in the 1847Â Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave.

After analyzing photojournalist James Karales's iconic photograph of the march, reading background material on it, and considering what the marchers might have thought and felt, students write and illustrate a postcard describing this civil rights event from a marcher's viewpoint.

Created By: Hillary Brady, Digital Public Library of America - Time Period: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) - Subjects: US History; Native Americans - Remixed By: Nicole Cockey - The writing task described here can be used as a diagnostic to assess students' inferential and narrative writing skills. Teachers should asses students' ability to drawing inferences based on what the primary sources explicity show and say. Teachers are also assessing students' narrative techniques, include establishing point of view or perspective, sequencing events coherently, vivid use of language language, and resolution. As a diagnostic, this writing activity should be performed on demand after students have had sufficient time to examine and analyze the primary sources.See "Text Set Exploring Identity, Culture, Agency through Boarding Schools" for more details.

*This remix combines a primary source set on "American Indian Boarding Schools" from the DPLA with an open-source 9th grade literature unit plan on Identity and Culture from Match Fish Tank. In this remix, students are first engaged in inquiry-based examination of a set of primary sources before more closely examining the relationship between identity, society, and schooling in the literary texts links below.For this remix, I have combined two open educational resources to create a text set that enables students to explore the concepts of identity, assimilation, and acclimation in the context of schooling.

In this activity, students will explore the perspectives of two Native American authors about the meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday and then write journal entries.