Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs Or Crowds?
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123 TEACHER GUIDE Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs or Crowds? Lesson Questions Why was crowd action a common form of protest in colonial America? What were the differences between the British and colonial views of Stamp Act protests? Lesson Task After reading primary source documents on Stamp Act protests, students will write a three-paragraph explanatory essay in which they describe the differences between the British and colonial views of these protests. Students will contextualize the Stamp Act protests within the larger tradition of crowd action in the colonies. NAEP Era: 3. Revolution and New Nation (1763 to 1815) Focal Skill: Reading for key ideas and details Number of Documents: 3 Number of Days: 4–5 Common Core Standards • CC reading standard: RHSS.6-8.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a text • CC writing standard: WHSS.6-8.2 Write informative/explanatory texts TABLE OF CONTENTS [Suggested time: 1 session] [Suggested time: 2–3 sessions] OVERVIEW .......................... 2 DOCUMENTS ...................... 9 • Cross-Document Discussion • Objectives • Documents Overview – Re-engage students in historical inquiry • Instructional Sequence • Document 1: A Colonial Crowd Destroys the Stamp Collector’s – Compare big ideas and details • Lesson Background & Student across documents Background Knowledge House – Help students articulate own THE HOOK ........................... 3 – Purpose, Strategy, Discussion • Document 2: Governor Thomas thinking • Purpose & Process Hutchinson Describes an Attack on Transition to Context-Setting • His Home [Suggested time: 1–2 sessions] CONTEXT ............................ 5 – Purpose, Process, Discussion WRITING ............................ 21 • Overview • Document 3: John Adams Reacts to Teachers’ Roles During Writing • Four Context Slides the Stamp Act Protests • Preparing Students to Write – Purpose & Process – Purpose, Process, Discussion • Slide Review • Writing Outline • Set Level of Writing Support • Transition to Documents • [Suggested time: 1/2 session] • Sample Student Essay CONNECT ........................... 19 • Writing Rubric • Purpose 1 Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs or Crowds? 2 OVERVIEW [Suggested time: 5 minutes] Content Objectives Students will understand how British officials and colonists viewed crowd protests against the Stamp Act differently. British officials viewed crowd actions as the work of only a few evil people, but capable of doing great harm to the colonies Colonists viewed crowd actions as a form of brave political protest that represented the majority view of the people Historical Thinking Objectives • Close Reading • Contextualization Skill Objective • Reading for key ideas and details Instructional Sequence Before you begin the lesson, you should share a brief agenda with students: HOOK Together, we will look at and discuss an image of colonial crowd protest. CONTEXT We’ll then review some background context about the tradition of crowd protest in the colonies and colonial reaction to the Stamp Act. DOCUMENTS On your own, you will read three primary source documents about crowd protest in response to the Stamp Act that show British and colonial perspectives on these actions. CONNECT We’ll have a discussion about the differences in these perspectives. WRITE You’ll write a three-paragraph explanatory essay in response to the lesson questions. Lesson Background Empires are expensive to maintain, and after a long (1754–1763) and costly war against the French in North America, the government of Great Britain was looking for ways to raise revenue. In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in an attempt to increase revenue from the colonies to pay for troops and colonial administration. The Stamp Act required colonists to purchase stamps for virtually every kind of document: legal, church, political and commercial documents, passports, dice and playing cards, books and newspapers, and even advertisements were all subject to the tax. The tax had to be paid in hard currency. The money raised would stay in the colonies to pay for colonial administrative costs, but was to be controlled by the royally-appointed colonial governors rather than the locally elected colonial assemblies. 2 Zoom In! Teacher Guide 2 Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs or Crowds? 3 The Stamp Act provoked widespread hostility. Opposition to the Stamp Act took many forms, from resolutions and petitions passed in colonial assemblies to street protests. Street protests were frequently violent and targeted at royally-appointed Stamp Masters, whose job it was to collect the tax. Eventually, the Stamp Masters in all of the colonies resigned their posts, making the Act impossible to enforce. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, but this would prove to be only the first in a series of “imperial crises” that would eventually lead to the Revolutionary War a decade later. These crowd protests against the Stamp Act were not unprecedented. In fact, crowd actions had long been a part of colonial life. Gathering together, ordinary people used the threat of violence—and sometimes, actual violence—to force business owners and political leaders to do what they believed to be fair. These actions occurred in part because many colonists could not participate in politics in any other way. In colonial society, only white men who owned property could vote or hold public office. This excluded more than half of the population—women, enslaved people, free African Americans, and men who worked as sailors, laborers, apprentices, and indentured servants. Crowd action reflected the popular belief that individuals should behave in ways that were good for everyone in the community and not just for themselves. “Food riots ” were common in eighteenth-century North America, as they were in Britain and elsewhere. There was a common view that, despite being outside the law, crowd action was sometimes necessary. Student Background Knowledge • The thirteen British colonies that became the United States were each ruled by a governor (chosen by the King) and an assembly (or legislature) elected by local residents who could vote. • To be eligible to vote in colonial America, you had to be white, male, and own property. • While colonial assemblies passed their own laws, the British Parliament could also pass laws that the colonies had to follow. THE HOOK [Suggested time: 10 minutes] A View of Colonial Protests Paying the Excise-Man Purpose To set up a question about whether colonial crowd action was the behavior of unruly mobs or a form of political protest. To generate student interest in the lesson topic by observing a dramatic and engaging image. Process • Ask students to observe the slide image. • After a few minutes, ask them what they see. – Encourage students to simply name details that they observe without yet discussing the meaning. 3 Zoom In! Teacher Guide 3 Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs or Crowds? 4 • Focus on these key details: – The actions of the men in the foreground and the background – Facial expressions and gesture – Visual details including: The feathers on the man, the noose, teapot, liberty tree, upside-down Stamp Act sign on the tree, crates being dumped, ship in a harbor • Read the image title with students and help them to decode the language. • Ask: – Who is an “excise-man”? What does “paying” mean here? – What is tarring and feathering? (The intent of tarring and feathering was generally public humiliation and warning, but not severe harm.) • Note the date of the image: October 1774. • Ask the first Think About It question: What is going on in this image? • Support students in identifying the larger meaning of the images and symbols. Where necessary, provide additional background information. – The print depicts Patriots tarring and feathering (and force-feeding tea to) a British official, the Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm. – The event is occurring under the Liberty Tree, the site of many colonial protests including those against the Stamp Act that had occurred nine years earlier. – During the Stamp Act protests, Patriots hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver from the tree, perhaps referenced by the noose. – In the background (and through the center teapot) the print references protests against the British tax on tea (the Boston Tea Party had occurred a year earlier). • After students have discussed the central content of the print, ask the second Think About It question: What point of view do you think the creator had about this event? • Ask follow-up questions to deepen students’ thinking and discussion: – Who do you think made and published this print? (The British) – What clues do we have about the point of view? > The facial expressions of the Patriots are a mix of both menace and glee > The central British figure appears brutalized and undefended – Why do you think the British would have published images like this one? – What do you think was the Patriot perspective on this event? • Transition to the lesson question and context-setting. Say to students: – Were these colonial protests the acts of violent and out of control mobs, or something else? – In this lesson, we will analyze the different perspectives the British and the colonists had on crowd action in response to the Stamp Act. – Before we do this however, we need to learn more about what was happening at this time: What was the Stamp Act and how did the colonists respond to it? How did their response connect to a larger tradition of crowd actions? 4 Zoom In! Teacher Guide 4 Protesting the Stamp Act: Mobs or Crowds? 5 TRANSITION TO CONTEXT-SETTING Transition students to the Context slides by letting them know that they are now going to look in a little more detail at the Stamp Act and the colonists’ response to it. Context slides are intended to serve as a support for a relatively quick “interactive lecture” with students. The goal is to both provide essential background information and engage students’ prior knowledge and thinking. While you can certainly slow the process down according to your students’ needs, context is not intended to be a “deep dive” into slide images.