Welcome to the TAH
Historical Thinking Skills
Workshop
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Please sign in up front, take a raffle ticket, and pick
up discussion questions and your name card!
Workshop Agenda
8:30-10:00
10:15-12:00
12:00-12:40
12:40-2:10
2:20-3:50
3:50-4:00
Rethinking History
Historical Thinking Skills
Lunch
Defining Freedoms
Primary Source Activity:
Freedom, Equality, Justice,
and the Social Contract
Conclusions and Evaluations
Primary Source Activity:
Freedom, Equality, Justice, and
the Social Contract
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Introduction
Part I – John Locke & Liberalism
Part II – Locke & Founding Documents
Part III – Extension Activities
All materials will eventually be posted on the
TAH website.
PSA: Freedom, Equality, Justice, and the
Social Contract
John Locke is considered by
many historians and
philosophers to be the
“Father of Liberalism.”
He’s pictured on the left;
NOT to be confused with
the guy on the right.
While there are many influences on the evolution of American
democracy, English philosopher John Locke provides a good
starting point for investigation of our democratic ideals
because he wrote about them at a critical time in the
historical development of modern liberalism.
We’ll take a brief look at Locke, his times, and some passages
of his work (the chart) before moving on to connections with
American history.
Historical Thinking Skills Questions for
John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government
Sourcing:
*What kind of source is this and when did it appear?
*Who is the author? What judgments can we make
about him?
*What are the author’s motives in writing this
document?
Contextualizing:
*Who is the author’s audience?
*What relevant or significant events occurred at the
time this document was produced?
England’s Glorious Revolution
1688-1689
Freedom (Liberty)
• Ch. II, “Of the State of Nature,” Section 4:
• To understand political power right, and
derive it from its original, we must consider,
what state all men are naturally in, and that
is, a state of perfect freedom to order their
actions, and dispose of their possessions and
persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of
the law of nature, without asking leave, or
depending upon the will of any other man.
Equality
• Ch. II, “Of the State of Nature,” Section 4:
• A state also of wherein all the power and jurisdiction is
reciprocal, no one having more than another; there
being nothing more evident, than that the creatures of
the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all
the same advantages of nature, and the use of the
same faculties, should also be equal one amongst
another without subordination or subjection, unless
the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest
declaration of his will, set one above another, and
confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment,
an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
Limits on Freedom;
Natural Rights
• Ch. II, “Of the State of Nature,” Section 6:
• But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state
of licence: though man in that state have an
uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or
possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself,
or so much as any creature in his possession, but
where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls
for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern
it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that
law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that
being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions…
Slavery Violates Natural Rights
• Ch. IV, “Of Slavery,” Sections 22-23:
• The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior
power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative
authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for
his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no
other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in
the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or
restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact,
according to the trust put in it… This freedom from
absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely
joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with
it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together:
for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by
compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one,
nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of
another, to take away his life, when he pleases.
Right to Property
• Ch. VI, “Of Property,” Section 27:
• Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to
all men, yet every man has a property in his own person:
this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his
body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly
his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that
nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his
labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and
thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed
from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by
this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the
common right of other men: for this labour being the
unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he
can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least
where there is enough, and as good, left in common for
others.
Social Contract
• Ch. VIII, “Of the Beginning of Political Societies,” Section 95:
• Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and
independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and
subjected to the political power of another, without his
own consent. The only way whereby any one divests
himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil
society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite
into a community for their comfortable, safe, and
peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure
enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security
against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may
do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are
left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When
any number of men have so consented to make one
community or government, they are thereby presently
incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the
majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.
Law and Justice
• Ch. IX, “Of the Ends of Political Society and Government,” Sections
124-126:
• The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is
the preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature
there are many things wanting.
First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received
and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and
wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies
between them… Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a
known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all
differences according to the established law: for everyone in that
state being both judge and executioner of the law of nature, men
being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry
them too far, and with too much heat, in their own cases... Thirdly,
In the state of nature there often wants power to back and
support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution…
Right to Change Government …
when necessary
Religious Freedom
• A Letter Concerning Toleration:
• …because the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any
more than to other men. It is not committed unto him, I say, by God;
because it appears not that God has ever given any such authority to one
man over another as to compel anyone to his religion. Nor can any such
power be vested in the magistrate by the consent of the people, because
no man can so far abandon the care of his own salvation as blindly to
leave to the choice of any other, whether prince or subject, to prescribe to
him what faith or worship he shall embrace. For no man can, if he would,
conform his faith to the dictates of another. All the life and power of true
religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is
not faith without believing. Whatever profession we make, to whatever
outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind
that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession
and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great
obstacles to our salvation.
Locke’s Influence on the Founders
• How did the ideas expressed by John Locke in late
17th-century England influence the Founders and
our country’s founding documents?
• What specific evidence is there of Locke’s
influence in…
*the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
*the Declaration of Independence,
*the U.S. Constitution, and
*the Bill of Rights
PSA Groups
Classroom 232
with Bill Kendrat
Kevin Bartell
Nellie Beaman
Carrie Clark
Mary Doyle
Steve Hummer
Sue Intili
Georgia Leser
Emily Martin
Amanda Massey
Ann McCafferty
Nancy Merriman
Hannah Oberlander
Martha Potts
Roxanne Rice
Jennifer Rodgers
David Snyder
Nancy Thomas
Lab 235
with Liz Glynn
Michele Brigham
Diane Chavez
Jay Dodson
Faith Ibarra
Mindi Kaleto
Damian Knecht
Michael Krepinevich
Michele LaFerriere
Linda Mejia
Alison Morey
Brian Papenheim
Laura Quindlen
Deborah Rice
Hannah Robinson
Kimberly Rouse
Benjamin Scarboro
Vic Selestay
Finding Connections in the Founding Documents
Part I
Divide up your team members as follows:
• 2 Team Members: Draw upon prior knowledge to
answer the historical thinking skills questions
(sourcing and contextualizing) for your assigned
document on the handout provided to you.
• 2-3 Team Members: Work together to close read
the document and identify at least three specific
connections to Locke’s Second Treatise … using
the chart provided. There may not be connections
for every concept listed.
Finding Connections in the Founding Documents
Part II
For each of the four document teams:
• Taking what you have learned about your document,
briefly share your responses to the sourcing and
contextualizing questions with the entire group.
• Then, briefly share three examples of specific
evidence of connections between Locke’s ideas and the
concepts addressed in your document.
For everyone (after each group has shared):
What evidence is there of concept connections across
multiple documents?
Making Connections Across American History
• Within your group, examine the primary sources
provided to you and using the historical thinking
skills questions as a guide, work together to:
*identify how the sources connect with each other
*identify what they tell you about the topic
• In each case study group, consider how the primary
sources build on and/or challenge the concepts
expressed in the documents you examined.
• All of the case study materials will be available to you
on the TAH website.
Pre-1865 Extension Topics
• Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson
(1790s)
• Rebellion against Slavery (1820s/1830s)
• Abolition Movement (1780s-1850s)
• Woman’s Rights (1848 and beyond)
Post-1865 Extension Activities
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Rights of Native Americans
Woman’s Rights
The Four Freedoms
Japanese-American Internment
The Civil Rights Movement