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Exploring Early America From Its Beginnings To 1900 Janet L. Kragen © 2009 Introduction Whenever I teach history, I emphasize cause and effect. I draw connections from one period or incident to others. I weave in geography, economics, and cultural anthropology. I promote critical and creative thinking. I appeal to multiple intelligences and different learning styles. And because I want to make history come alive, I tell stories and include snippets of information that fascinate as well as inform. Creating America: Exploring Early America from its Beginnings to 1900 is a companion piece to my previous book Decade Days: Exploring the Twentieth Century in America. Like Decade Days, Creating America is designed to be a teacher resource. It is not an exhaustive account of American history but serves instead as an outline and supplement to other materials. Creating America can be used with any textbook or—as I prefer—with multiple texts. My favorite technique is to collect 40 or more United States history textbooks, from grades four or five through high school or college, along with some general U.S. history books written for adults, including some written from a very particular point of view. I let my students pick the book that best suits their interest and reading level. The students all read about the same topics but bring different specific information to the classroom discussions. In each chapter of Creating America, you will find a brief lesson designed to capture a piece of U.S. history. Use the lesson to introduce or to review material. Virtually every chapter has a list of resources. A few refer to pages in secondary school textbooks, but more often I list relevant pages from college texts or adult history books or the Annals of America, a compilation of primary source material. Most lists of resources include films. In the same way I use books written at multiple levels, I draw on films geared to all ages, from elementary students through adults. The numbers beside the names of films are the catalog numbers for the Olympic Educational Service District. You can go to their website and search by the numbers to find out more information about each film: http://otter.esd114.wednet.edu/. Each chapter also has activities for individuals or small groups or the whole class. Designed to appeal to students with different learning styles or talents, these activities bring in critical and creative thinking. The activities drive the students into research beyond the textbook. And they help students put themselves into history. I hope you will use Creating America to enrich your presentation of United States history, geography, economics, and culture from the earliest colonies to 1900. I hope you and your students have fun learning about our country’s beginning! Janet L. Kragen January 2009 © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 2 Table of Contents 3 Basic Human Needs 7 Cultural Universals 9 European Explorers I 11 Empires of America 14 Clash of the Titans 16 European Explorers II 18 Motivations to Move 21 Bringing Baggage 23 Colonial Children 24 Picking a Place 26 Escaping Religious Persecution 28 Compacts and Charters 31 Expanding Religious Rights 33 Making Money 35 Bartering 38 Buying Land, Taking Land 40 Compelled to Come 42 Keeping Slaves 44 Colonial Regions 46 Education in America 49 © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 3 VIPs of the American Revolution 51 French and Indian War 53 The Mercantile Theory 56 Causes of the Revolution 58 The Battles Begin 62 The Try for Canada 67 Declaration of Independence 71 Don’t Forget the Women 79 The Battles of Trenton and Princeton 81 The Turning Point 85 We Win! 88 Establishing Our Government 94 Napoleon’s Impacts on the United States 98 Lewis and Clark 103 Sacajawea 109 Transportation 110 Moving West 113 Andrew Jackson 120 Texas 122 The Oregon Trail 125 California’s Gold Rush 128 Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement 132 Lincoln and the Beginning of the War 138 © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 4 Fighting the War 141 The Union Victory 145 Reconstruction 148 The Indian Wars 151 The Transcontinental Railroad and Beyond 154 Industrial Growth 158 Immigration 161 The Spanish-American War 167 End of the Year Tests 170 Print Bibliography 175 Film Series Bibliography 177 Acknowledgments 179 Author Bio 180 © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 5 “America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named for a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.” (The Oxford History of the American People, p. 23.) © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 6 Basic Human Needs History, economics, anthropology, sociology—in all the social sciences we try to figure out why human beings act the way they do. Why did the early settlers in upstate New York choose to build in Camillus? It wasn’t just a random choice. There were trees for building homes, good soil for farms, ample fresh water and game. There was access by water all the way to New York City. There was falling water to provide power for watermills. The first mills in Camillus sawed logs for further construction and crushed corn for the production of whiskey, a cash crop whose concentrated form allowed for more efficient transportation by water to New York City. Settlers could provide for the immediate needs of their family and earn extra money to spend on manufactured or imported goods. If we have some understanding of basic human needs, we can begin to unravel how and why people—even people widely separated from us by time or space or culture—do the things they do. ACTIVITIES List the most basic human physical needs. What do human beings require in order to survive on this planet? (For example: air, food, water, shelter, clothing, salt). Use a flowchart to demonstrate how some of those physical needs cover multiple purposes. (For example: air provides oxygen for breathing and also for fire. Food and shelter are needed for livestock as well as for people. Water is needed for livestock, too, and for washing and irrigation. Waterways still provide the cheapest mode of transportation. Falling water can be used to produce power). Work in small groups of two or three students each. Two groups work on North America before the arrival of the Europeans—one group on North American clothing and one group on North American homes (human shelters). In the same way, two groups work on South America, two on Europe, two on Asia, two on Africa, and two on the Pacific islands. Collect and display pictures of different kinds of clothing or shelters from your group’s area. Particularly focus on pictures that illustrate clothing and shelter in use before 1900. Label each picture with the name of the group of people who used the clothing or shelters. Provide information on the local climate for each picture. How were local resources used? Share the displays with the class. Compare and contrast clothing and shelters used around the world prior to 1900. Analyze the impact of climate on the materials available for people to use in creating their clothes and homes. © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 7 Poor people make do with the materials readily to hand. Rich people can pay inordinate sums of money to have many laborers work long hours using difficult local materials, or they can import expensive materials from far away. Look at your displays again, and try to determine which examples of clothing or shelter are representative of the rich, and which are representative of the poor. © 2009. Janet L. Kragen. 8 Cultural Universals Ethnic groups can identify themselves on the basis of religion, language, tribal links, common ancestors, or physical characteristics. Each of us identifies with one or more ethnic groups. Broader populations inculcate common beliefs, behaviors, arts, and institutions to form a culture. Each of us is a part of a culture. No matter where human beings live—no matter when human beings live—they have certain things in common. Every group of humans is impacted by its setting. All groups try to explain the world around them. They teach their young. People work to provide for their basic needs— and for their desires that go beyond the simple requirements for survival. ACTIVITIES Define race, ethnic group, and culture. Discuss the various understandings of those terms and how they have changed over time. (Note to teachers: I am finding that the students I work with are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea that there is really only one race—the human race. I don’t know if that trend would be true across the country. The idea of there being different races of human beings seems to be an invention by people who, quite overtly, wanted to classify some groups of people as intrinsically better than others). Explain what we mean by a “cultural universal.” (See next page “Sample List of Cultural Universals”). Working in groups of three to four, list as many different cultural universals that you can. When the time is up, compile a joint list for the class. Go through the list, telling how each universal applies to life in America today. Classify and organize your list. Arrange the list into an order that makes sense to you. (Note to teacher—post the list in the classroom so you can refer to it throughout the year). © 2009. Janet L. Kragen.

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