APUSH Thematic Outline 2012-2013
Third Period (8 weeks - January 8 – March 6)
Required reading in Textbook:
(1) Unit 4: The Birth of Modern America, 1865-1901 Unit 5: Imperialism and Progressivism, 1890-1920 Unit 6: Boom and Bust, 1920-1941
Learning goals and activities
7. A Growing Nation (Antebellum America) (1 weeks)
Explore the debates on state rights and judicial federalism.
Discuss Jackson’s government and the expansion of democracy in America.
Research and analyze social reforms, transcendentalism and utopian communities in Antebellum America and the development and conflict of the American culture literary and artistic Renaissance.
Discuss the physical territorial expansion of the nation and its relation with the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny and discuss the causes and results of the Mexican War and American imperialism in an essay. (Some documents and maps will be provided)
8. Civil war and the Reconstruction (1 weeks)
Characterize the population makeup of the South and the relations between blacks and whites.
List and identify the causes that lead to the Civil War: the Compromise of 1850, popular sovereignty, the Kansas Nebraska Act, the 1860 Elections and Abraham Lincoln and secession.
Chart resources, military strategies and diplomacy of both the North and South at war.
Analyze the effect of the Declaration of Emancipation on black societies during the war.
Understand the social, political and economic effects of the war on the American peoples.
Study Radical Reconstruction and the compromise of 1877 and evaluate the impact of reconstruction in the Southern States and the role of African-Americans in State governments, education and economy.
9. Restructuring the nation (3 ½ weeks)
Evaluate the configuration of the new South: Jim Crow and the segregation policy.
Analyze the expansion and development of the West Frontier, the government policies towards the American indigenous population and the environmental impact of the colonization of the West.
Discuss the meaning of democracy for the American society during the Revolutionary War, before the Civil War era and its vision during 1800’s. How was democracy perceived at different periods of time in America? Students will explain the Gilded Age, individualism, Social Darwinism and the New Order in a free response essay: How did individualism and industrialization changed the values, lifestyle and society of Modern America?
10. Reforms, expansion and war (2 ½ weeks)
Identify the Urban society and the new intellectual and cultural movements that developed in this period.
Compare and contrast using a table the administrations of the Progressive Presidents; Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson and their domestic reforms.
Analyze in a three part essay: The role of women, black America and civil rights during the Progressive Era.
Explain, list and map the causes and results of the political and economic imperialist expansion of the nation.
Describe in a timeline the initial neutrality and the reasons for involvement of Americans during the First World War, the effects of the Treaty of Versailles and the turbulent aftermath of foreign and American affairs.
Research aspects of the society and economy of the post war period and prepare posters to validate their investigation.
11. Turbulent decades (1 weeks)
Study The Jazz Age and the consumerist economy and outline responses to the cultures of Modernism, Fundamentalism, Nativism, and the Prohibition.
Compare and contrast the Republican presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.
Identify the causes of The Great Depression and explain why Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal helped American Society trust the government in times of despair and what it implied for the African American population.
Other Activities
Jim Crow and the segregation policy’s cartoons analysis. Study different cartoons on the subject and draw (or find) an anti segregation cartoon explaining the repercussions of segregation in the black communities.
Class Discussion: New immigration laws and discrimination of minority groups; similarities and differences in different moments of American history.
Progressive Reform and the Trusts Hand Out.
Write a list of the five principal causes of the Great Depression and how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government dealt with them using primary or secondary sources to prove the argument. The Great Depression and the New Deal’s treatment of African Americans Hand Out (includes Cartoon analysis)
Outline of the principal events of the I World War.
Topic Tests: Will include 10 multiple choice questions, 10 definitions or identification exercises and a free-response-style essay.
DBQ on the Progressive Era
Primary Source Readings
Chief Seattle Speech version 1 Washington State Library Seattle Sunday Star, Oct. 29, 1887 (Discussion about the authenticity of documents using this example.)
Controversies of the 1920s Hand Out http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us33.cfm
Henry Cabot Lodge: Reservations with Regard to the Treaty of the League of Nations http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/doc41.htm
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Statement on the Good-Neighbor Policy in Cuba. August 13, 1933 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14502#ixzz1SaSPxQKS
Secondary Source Readings
Jacoby, Susan, The Age of American Unreason, Vintage Books, New York, 2008 Chapter 2 The way we lived then: Intellect and Ignorance in a Young Nation
Pike, Fredrick B. “F.D.R.'S Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 1996