ASSIGNMENT #1: THE COLONIES
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 37-45 (stop at “Connecticut Valley”), 46-47, 51-52, 70-72, 74, 76-80, 93-96
(graph only on p. 96), 100-102.
Reader: The Mayflower Compact; John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity.”
Terms:
joint-stock company
Jamestown
John Smith
headright system
House of Burgesses
Powhatan and Pocahontas
Mayflower Compact
Puritans
Massachusetts Bay Colony
John Winthrop
Quakers
indentured servitude
Middle Passage
mercantilism
Navigation Acts
Questions:
1. In general, what inspired people to leave England and venture to the New World?
2. What hardships did early Virginians face? What caused some of these hardships?
3. In what ways did tobacco "save" the Virginia colony?
4. What led the Pilgrim Separatists to leave Europe and come to the wilderness of the New World?
5. What were the patterns of migration to Massachusetts Bay? The patterns to the Chesapeake
colonies? How did the migration patterns shape the development of the regions?
6. When and why did Chesapeake planters switch from servants to slaves?
7. How did African American communities change over time? To what extent did slaves resist their
owners?
8. What type of relationship did mercantilism create between Britain and the American colonies?
9. By the 1770’s, just how valuable were the 13 North American colonies, anyway?
ASSIGNMENT #2: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 107 (start at “Diverging Politics”)-108, 119-121, 127-129, 131-135 (stop at “A
Strained Relationship”), 137-141, 164-165, 168-175, A-1 to A-2 (Appendix section).
Reader, Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress; First Continental Congress, Declaration and Resolves;
Second Continental Congress, “Declaration of the Causes of the Necessity of Taking Up Arms;”
Thomas Paine, “Common Sense;” Political Cartoons in the Revolutionary Period; British and
colonial accounts of Lexington and Concord; Letters Between Abigail Adams and
John Adams.
Terms:
virtual and direct/actual representation
French and Indian War/Peace of Paris
George III
Proclamation Line of 1763
Quartering Acts
Sugar Act
Stamp Act/Stamp Act Congress
parliamentary sovereignty vs. country ideology
Declaratory Act
Townshend Act
Boston Massacre
committees of correspondence
Tea Act/Boston Tea Party
Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)
First/Second Continental Congress
Common Sense
Declaration of Independence
battles to know:
Lexington/Concord
Saratoga
Yorktown
Questions:
1. What explains the different views regarding representation in Great Britain and the colonies?
2. Know the precise stipulations of the Peace of Paris of 1763.
3. In what ways did the colonists react to/protest the different British revenue acts?
4. How do the British and American accounts of the Boston Massacre and the battles of Lexington
and Concord differ?
5. How was the tone and content of the Second Continental Congress different from those of the
First? What explains the change?
6. What advantages did each side have in the War? Disadvantages?
7. What led France to support the American cause? What impact did France’s support for the
Americans have on the war?
8. What were the main provisions of the Peace of Paris of 1783?
9. How did the war affect Native Americans, African Americans, and women? What was the
economic effect of the war?
ASSIGNMENT #3: E PLURIBUS UNUM: FROM CONFEDERATION TO CONSTITUTION
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 182-186, 188-190, 198-205, A-2 to A-10 (Appendix section).
Reader, Federalist 10; Federalist 51; Charles Beard, “The Constitution: A Minority Document;”
Selected Arguments of Anti-Federalists.
Terms:
Republicanism
“Republican Motherhood”
Articles of Confederation
Northwest Ordinance
Shays’s Rebellion
original intent
Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan
Great Compromise (including Three-fifths Compromise)
Electoral College
judicial review
federalism
Federalists and Antifederalists
the Federalist Papers
the Bill of Rights
Questions:
1. Who was considered “the people?” Who is considered “the people” today?
2. In what ways did the Articles of Confederation limit the power of the central government?
Under the Articles, what important powers did the central government lack?
3. Why were the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention kept secret? What might this
indicate about the concerns of the framers? How has it impacted our search for the intent of the
framers?
4. Why was slavery a source of controversy at the convention? In what ways did pro and antislavery delegates reach compromise at the convention?
5. How did James Madison explain that republicanism was the best form of government for the
United States?
6. What is Madison’s concern regarding the rights of the “minority” in the U.S.? How does he
predict that the nature and composition of the American republic will prevent the rights of the
minority from being threatened?
7. According to Charles Beard, what is the economic/class basis of the Constitution?
8. What types of individuals tended to be Federalists? Anti-Federalists?
9. What arguments did anti-Federalists use against the Constitution? Why were they suspicious of
the government it created?
10. Know the key provisions of the Constitution: the division of government, the powers granted
each branch, the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
ASSIGNMENT #4: THE EARLY REPUBLIC
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 210-221(stop at “Franco-American Relations”), 224 (start at “Whiskey
Rebellion”)-228, 240-245 (skip “Florida and Western Schemes”), 247-248 (“Decision for War”),
252 (“The Treaty of Ghent…”).
Reader, Hamilton vs. Jefferson on Popular Rule; Jefferson, “The Importance of Agriculture;”
Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures; Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s Opinions on the
Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States; George Washington’s Farewell Address.
Terms:
Presidential Cabinet
Judiciary Act of 1789
Hamilton’s reports on
Public Credit
Bank of the United States
Manufactures
Federalists and Republicans
Whiskey Rebellion
Jay’s Treaty
Washington’s Farewell Address
XYZ Affair/Quasi-War
Alien and Sedition Acts
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Marbury v. Madison
Louisiana Purchase
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Barbary War
Embargo Act of 1807
War of 1812
Treaty of Ghent
Battle of New Orleans
Hartford Convention
Questions:
1. How did the different regions of the early United States differ? How were they similar?
2. What were the key contrasts between Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s political views?
3. What policies did Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit promote? Why did Hamilton favor such
policies? Why did Madison and other Jeffersonians (Democratic-Republicans) oppose such
policies?
4. Why did Hamilton favor creating a bank of the U.S.? How did Hamilton defend its
constitutionality? Why did Jefferson oppose creating a bank of the U.S.? How did Jefferson
argue that it was unconstitutional?
5. What did Hamilton advocate in his Report on Manufactures? Why? Why did Jeffersonians
(Democratic-Republicans) oppose this?
6. What did Washington warn against in his Farewell Address? To what extent did Americans heed
his warnings? Why is the address significant?
7. How can one argue that the outcome of the election of 1800 was truly revolutionary?
8. Jefferson believed in liberty, small government and agrarianism. How did the Louisiana Purchase
and Embargo Act contradict these principles? Why then did Jefferson deem them necessary?
9. Who was pro-war in 1812, and who was against it? Why?
ASSIGNMENT #5: 1820’s NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 252-255, 257-261.
Reader, The Monroe Doctrine.
Terms:
The Era of Good Feelings
Second Bank of the United States
Tariff of 1816
Erie Canal
Dartmouth College v. Woodward
McColloch v. Maryland
Monroe Doctrine
Panic of 1819
Missouri Compromise
American System
“corrupt bargain”
Questions:
1. What does the term “judicial nationalism” mean? Assess the influence of Justice John Marshall
on United States History.
2. What relationship did the Monroe Doctrine seek to establish between the United States and
Europe? Between the U.S. and Latin America?
3. How does Monroe defend these policies in the Monroe Doctrine? What other American
interests may have prompted such policies?
4. Why was Missouri's application for statehood so controversial and important? Who brokered
the compromise, and why? Did the compromise resolve sectional differences?
ASSIGNMENT #6: THE AGE OF ANDREW JACKSON
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 266-281.
Reader, South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification; Calhoun, Fort Hill Address; Jackson, Address to
the People of South Carolina; Four documents on Indian Removal.
Terms:
Salary Act of 1816
Second Great Awakening
Albany Regency
Indian Removal Act
Worcester v. Georgia; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
Trail of Tears
Tariff of 1828 (tariff of abominations)
Nullification
the Peggy Eaton Affair
Force Bill
Compromise Tariff of 1833
Bank War
Whig Party
Questions:
1. In what sense did American politics become more democratic during the 1820s and 30s? Less
democratic?
2. Who was particularly drawn to the new evangelical religious movement? Why?
3. How did Jackson become a symbol of the period? To what extent was his image as a “man of
the people” accurate?
4. How did Martin Van Buren and fellow Democratic leaders redefine national party politics?
5. How did Jackson defend the spoils system as promoting democratic values? To what extent did
he actually overhaul who was in government positions?
6. How did Marshall rule in Worcester v. Georgia? Why was this ruling not enforced?
7. What is the standpoint of the Cherokees in their “Memorial?” How does it differ from
Jackson’s standpoint on their removal, and what awaits them in the West?
8. Why did South Carolina (and other Southern states) oppose high tariffs so vigorously? What
states might have supported high tariffs? What did the Nullification crisis indicate about the
relationship between the North and South in the 1830s?
ASSIGNMENT #7: ANTEBELLUM EXPANSION AND REFORM
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 326-330, 335-339, 341 (“The Temperance Movement”)-353, 374-377, 381-385.
Reader, Lisa Belkin, “The Opt-Out Revolution;” Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Address at the Seneca Falls
Convention; Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments; John L. O’Sullivan on Manifest Destiny;
James McPherson, “America’s Wicked War;” Viewpoints of the Mexican War.
Terms:
Gibbons v. Ogden
putting-out system
Waltham/Lowell system
cotton Gin
interchangeable parts
temperance/American Temperance Society
cult of domesticity
Mormons
Horace Mann
communism; utopianism; transcendentalism
American Colonization Society
American Anti-Slavery Society
William Lloyd Garrison
Seneca Falls
Republic of Texas
Alamo
Manifest Destiny
Mexican War
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Questions:
1. How did canals, roads, railroads and steamboats transform the American economy during the
first half of the 19th century?
2. What were the main reasons for the rise of the temperance movement? Who was most active in
the movement, and why?
3. To what extent was the Cult of Domesticity a rationalization for male dominance? To what
extent did it apply to poor and working class women?
4. To what extent did 1830’s America have a “drinking problem?”
5. Who supported the growth of public school systems? Who did not support it?
6. What were the sources of division within the abolitionist movement? To what extent was the
abolitionist movement of the 1830s and 1840s successful?
7. In what ways was the women’s rights movement of the ante-bellum period an outgrowth of the
abolitionist movement?
8. What attracted American settlers to Texas during the 1820s? What was the relationship
between the settlers of Texas and the Mexican government?
9. What were the causes of the U.S. war with Mexico? What did the U.S. gain from the war?
10. What impact did the outcome of the Mexican War and settlement have on slavery?
ASSIGNMENT #8: “THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION”
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 301-302 (stop at “Urban Slavery”). 310-313, figure 11-3 on p. 317, 319-321..
Reader, Jacobs, excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Abolition and the Southern Defense
of Slavery.
Terms:
Upper South/Lower South
Denmark Vesey/Vesey Conspiracy
Nat Turner
Underground Railroad
paternalism
“King Cotton”
Questions:
1.
Was slavery profitable? How did profit margins impact slave trading and Southern economic
development?
2.
How did slaves protest against the institution of slavery?
3.
What conclusions and predictions can be made after interpreting the data in fig. 11-3?
4.
What was the “necessary evil” justification for slavery? What were the different components
of the “positive good” justification? Why might the “positive good” argument have become
more popular in the South during the 1830s and 1840s?
5.
You are a plantation owner and your northern friend, a factory owner, is visiting. How might
you defend your labor system to him? In what ways is your slave system superior to his free
labor system?
6.
7.
What impact did the cotton gin and the rise of cotton have on slavery in the U.S.?
Describe the social structure of the white South. Why did non-slaveholding white Southerners
tolerate and support slavery?
ASSIGNMENT #9: “A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND”: THE SECTIONAL CRISIS
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 390-394, 400-403, 407-408, 410-414 (stop at “Presidential Inaction”), 415-419.
Reader, Dred Scott v. Sandford; The Lincoln-Douglas Debates; Lincoln’s First Inaugural
Address.
Terms:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Wilmot Proviso
Popular sovereignty
Free-Soil Party
Gold Rush
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act
“Bleeding Kansas”
Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner
Know-Nothing Party
Republican Party
Dred Scott v. Sandford
John Brown/Harper’s Ferry
Confederate States of America
Fort Sumter
Questions:
1.
Why did the debate over slavery in the 1850’s largely center on the status of slavery in the
territories? How did the results of the Mexican War aggravate this debate?
2. What events led to the growth of the Republican Party? What types of people were attracted to it?
What was its stance on slavery?
3. What is Douglas’ depiction of Lincoln’s stance on slavery in the Lincoln-Douglas debates? What is
Lincoln’s stance on slavery and equality (as articulated in the debates)? What is Lincoln’s
critique of Douglas and his stance on slavery?
4. Why did the Presidential election of 1860 result in the secession of the states of the Deep South?
5. To what degree was the move to secede a unified “Southern” decision?
ASSIGNMENT #10: THE CIVIL WAR
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 425-429, 431-433 (“Reassessing the War”), 434-436, 438-439 (“Black Troops in
the Union Army”), 445-447, 449-452, 454-459.
Reader, Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley; Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address; Sherman’s Atlanta Correspondence; Charles Hopkins’s Account of
Andersonville; Walter Addison’s Recollections of a Confederate Soldier; Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural Address; Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
Terms:
“anaconda” policy
conscription; Enrollment Act
greenbacks
early battles (1861-1862): Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam
U.S. Sanitary Commission
Emancipation Proclamation
54th Massachusetts Regiment
later battles (1863-1865): Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Petersburg
suspension of habeas corpus
Copperheads
Radical Republicans
Homestead Act
Land Grant College Act
New York City draft riots
Sherman’s March
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural
Appomattox
John Wilkes Booth
Andersonville
Questions:
1. How prepared was each side for war? How did each side mobilize and army and create
excitement for war?
2. Who was exempt from the drafts? What problems did this create?
3. What advantages did the North have in the Civil War? What advantages did the South have?
How did each side pay for its war expenses?
4. What were that strengths and weaknesses (as political or military leaders) of Lincoln, Davis,
Grant, Lee, and Sherman?
5. Why was the Civil War so much deadlier than previous wars?
6. Why did Great Britain ultimately decide to stay out of the war?
7. What factors led Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation when he did?
8. To whom did the Proclamation apply? Why does Lincoln limit its scope? Did it really
emancipate anyone?
9. In what ways did Lincoln assume unprecedented executive power during the war? How did
Lincoln defend his actions? To what degree was political dissent permitted?
10.
In what ways did the South endure more hardship during the war than the North?
ASSIGNMENT #11: RECONSTRUCTION AND ITS AFTERMATH
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 466-470, 474-480, 483-485, 487-489 (stop at “modest gains and future victories”),
511-515.
Reader, Plessy v. Ferguson.
Terms:
Lost Cause
Freedmen’s Bureau
Sharecropping
Ten Percent Plan
Wade-Davis Bill
Black Codes
Civil Rights Act of 1866
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
Congressional/Radical Reconstruction
Tenure of Office Act
Ku Klux Klan
Redeemers
Compromise of 1877
People’s Grocery
Jim Crow
poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
Questions:
1. To what extent did the Freedmen’s Bureau successfully help black southerners?
2. Be able to compare and contrast the Reconstruction plans of Lincoln, Johnson, and Congressional
Republicans.
3. In what sense are the acts of Radical Reconstruction radical? What other, more radical measures
might Congress have taken to promote and protect the rights of freed blacks? Why didn’t
Congress take such actions?
4. Why was Andrew Johnson impeached? What impact did this impeachment crisis have on the office
of the Presidency and on who would next be chosen to lead the Republican Party?
5. Why did support for Reconstruction wane? What was the generally agreed-upon view of the
Reconstruction period?
6. What was the status of black southerners during the 1880’s, and how and why did it change in the
1890’s?
7. What are the essential facts of the Plessy case? What arguments does the majority use to justify its
decision? What arguments does Harlan make in his dissent?
8. How, as Goldfield et al. ask on page 515, could the South “get away with it?”
ASSIGNMENT #12: EXPANSION WEST AND THE GILDED AGE
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 560-563 (stop at “warfare and dispossession”), 566-569, 526-538, 543-545, 552554.
Reader, Turner’s “The Significance of the Frontier in American History;” The Dawes Act; The
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth;” excerpts from
Sinclair’s The Jungle.
Terms:
Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads
Wounded Knee
Dawes Act
Turner’s thesis
horizontal and vertical integration
Standard Oil
Tenements
settlement houses
Gospel of Wealth/Social Darwinism
Great Uprising (Railroad Strike of 1877)
Knights of Labor
Haymarket Riot
American Federation of Labor
collective bargaining
Homestead Strike
Pullman Strike
Naturalization Act; Chinese Exclusion Act
Coney Island
Questions:
1. How does the building of the transcontinental railroad embody this entire unit of study?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate how depressed you are after reading the pages about Native Americans.
3. According to Turner, how has the frontier helped to create an "American nationality"?
4. The corporation: good, or evil?
5. In what sense did Andrew Carnegie come to symbolize the "American Dream" during the late 19th
century? In what ways has the American Dream remained the same?
6. How did the rise of industrialization stimulate the incorporation of women and children into the
workplace? How did the new industrial economy help women? How did it harm them?
7. How was the nativism of the late 19th century similar to and different from the nativism of previous
eras?
8. In what ways can our present-day social norms be traced to 1900?
9. What did the department store provide? What did it symbolize?
10. Why did baseball become the “national pastime?”
ASSIGNMENT #13: POPULISM AND PROGRESSIVISM
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 599-600, 601-603, 604 (“National Action”)-610, 620-624 (skip “Church and
Campus”), 627-629, 631-635,637 (Theodore Roosevelt)-643.
Reader, Populist Party Platform; Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech; Olmsted on Central Park;
Robert Owen’s speech for women’s suffrage; Muller v. Oregon; Booker T. Washington,
Atlanta Exposition Address; DuBois, excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk.
Handout, essay on The Wizard of Oz.
Terms:
Interstate Commerce Act/ICC
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Farmers’ Alliance
Omaha Platform
Coxey’s Army
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (yes, again)
Muckraking
Frederick Taylor/scientific management
ILGWU/ WTUL
IWW
settlement houses (yes, again)
18th Amendment
Mann Act
Niagara Movement
NAACP
NAWSA
19th Amendment
conservation vs. preservation; Bureau of Reclamation
“trustbusting”
Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug Acts
16th Amendment
Election of 1912
Questions:
1. What were the farmers’ major grievances? In what ways did these grievances get political
expression?
2. How does William Jennings Bryan depict the Democratic party? What critique of his political
opponents is implicit in Bryan’s speech? How does Bryan characterize cities? How does he
characterize farming?
3. What aspects of modern political campaigning were used for the first time in 1896?
4. How did mechanization impact the working conditions of laborers? In what different ways did
labor organize, and how did middle class reformers seek to help workers?
5. Compare and contrast the arguments of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
6. How did the arguments used by modern suffrage movement leaders like Carrie Chapman Catt
differ from those used by earlier suffragists? How do these arguments reflect the spirit of
progressivism?
7. To what degree was Theodore Roosevelt a champion of big business? Of labor? Of “nature”?
8. What factors caused the split of the Republican Party?
ASSIGNMENT #14: IMPERIALISM
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 654-656, map on p. 657, 660-667 (skip “Chile and Venezuela”), 669-672 (stop at
“Dollar Diplomacy”).
Reader, Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”; Crosby’s “The Real White Man’s Burden”;
Roosevelt’s “Address on the Strenuous Life”; the Teller and Platt Amendments;
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
Terms:
imperialism
Alfred T. Mahan
“Seward’s Folly”
Queen Lil'iukalani
yellow journalism
“Remember the Maine”
Teller Amendment
the “Rough Riders”
Treaty of Paris
Anti-Imperialist League
Emilio Aguinaldo
Taft Commission
Platt Amendment
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
Questions:
1. In the late 19th century, what were the underlying economic, political, and ideological motivations
of the United States overseas?
2. For what reasons did the U.S. ultimately annex Hawaii? Make an argument that annexation was
justified; make an argument why it was reprehensible.
3. What were the arguments for and against the annexation of the Philippines? Why might individuals
as diverse as Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie, and Mark Twain have all opposed
imperialism?
4. For what reasons have historians compared the Filipino-American War to the Vietnam War?
5. Why did Roosevelt want to build a canal in Panama? How did he get the construction and control
of the canal accomplished, despite Colombia’s opposition?
6. What events in Latin America promoted Roosevelt to issue the Roosevelt Corollary? What were
the main declarations of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?
ASSIGNMENT #15: WORLD WAR I
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. , 681-684 (stop at “the battle over preparedness”), 686 (top of page)-691, 696-699,
702-704.
Reader, Wilson’s War Message; Schenk v. US; “Over There.”
Posted on website: essay on IQ tests; the Fourteen Points.
Terms:
Central Powers
Allied Powers
U-boats
Lusitania
Sussex Pledge
Zimmerman Telegram
War Industries Board
Food Administration
National War Labor Board
Liberty Bonds
Committee on Public Information
Espionage and Sedition Acts
Selective Service Act
Fourteen Points
League of Nations
Treaty of Versailles
Article Ten
Red Scare
Palmer Raids
Questions:
1. Although the U.S. maintained a policy of neutrality, why did many Americans tend to
sympathize with the Allied Powers? To what extent were U.S. political and economic policies
actually neutral?
2. How did the war change the relationship between the government and business? How did it
affect civil liberties and political dissent?
3. Why did the War Department use the newly developed IQ test in their psychological examination
of military recruits? In what ways did the results of these tests confirm stereotypes of African
Americans and “new” immigrants?
4. Why did the U.S. Senate refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles?
5. How were the Red Scare and Election of 1920 logical results of World War I?
ASSIGNMENT #16: THE JAZZ AGE, GREAT DEPRESSION, AND NEW DEAL
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 716-718 (stop at “The Fate of Reform”), 719-725, 729-732, 742-749 (stop at
“Protest”), 750-761, 762-764, 766 (“Ebbing of the New Deal”)-767 (stop at “Good
Neighbors…”).
Reader, “Should We Legalize Drugs?;” two Langston Hughes poems; Steinbeck, The Harvest
Gypsies; Hoover’s Rugged Individualism speech; FDR’s acceptance of re-nomination.
Terms:
Great Migration
Marcus Garvey/Black Star Line
Harlem Renaissance
Volstead Act/Prohibition
Scopes Trial
Hoovervilles
Bonus Army
the Hundred Days
“fireside chats”
FDIC
SEC
CWA/PWA
CCC
AAA
NRA
TVA/Rural Electrification Administration
WPA
Huey Long
Social Security Act
Wagner Act
Indian Reorganization Act
Fair Labor Standards Act
FDR’s “court-packing”
Questions:
1. In what specific ways did Republican administrations favor business in the 1920’s?
2. Why was marketing increasingly emphasized in the 1920s? How did advertising change American
consumption patterns?
3. What new forms of entertainment and culture emerged in the 1920’s?
4. How did women’s roles change in the 1920s? How did they remain the same?
5. How did writers and artists of the 1920’s react to their era?
6. What were the causes of the Great Crash of 1929? Why did it turn into a depression?
7. How did the Depression affect various racial, economic, and age groups? Marriage and families?
8. How did Hoover address the Depression? How did this contrast with FDR’s approach?
9. Why did many people oppose the New Deal?
10. How was the Election of 1936 indicative of a new Democratic political coalition?
11. To what extent was the New Deal effective in combating the Depression? To what extent did the
New Deal change American society over the long term? What is your overall assessment of the
New Deal?
ASSIGNMENT #17: WORLD WAR II
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 777-784, map on p. 787, 788-792, map on p. 797, 803 (“Searching For Peace”)805. [note: pp. 784-788 and 796-803 is optional reading for those wanting more about the
military aspects of the war.]
Reader, FDR, Four Freedoms Speech; FDR on Lend-Lease; Hirabayashi v. United States; DBQ
on the atomic bomb.
Terms:
Axis Powers
Allied Powers
blitzkrieg
cash-and-carry; destroyers for bases
Lend-Lease
Pearl Harbor
War Production Board, Office of Price Administration
Manhattan Project
Navajo “code talkers”
WACS and WAVES
“Rosie the Riveter”
Japanese internment
D-Day
Yalta and Potsdam Conferences
United Nations
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
V-E Day
V-J Day
Questions:
1. Know the basic sequence of events in both theaters of war (Europe and Japan).
2. How did the war effect economic growth? Scientific breakthroughs?
3. In what capacities did women and minorities serve in the war (active duty)? How did women
contribute to the war effort at home?
4. How might one argue that the experiences of women and African Americans during World War II
were factors that, in part, led to the development of the women’s and civil rights movements?
5. Other than defeating Japan, what goals influenced the U.S. decision to drop the atomic bomb on
Japan? What evidence is there to indicate that these goals motivated or influenced the U.S.
decision to drop the atomic bomb?
ASSIGNMENT #18: COLD WAR POLITICS
Readings:
Goldfield et. al, pp. 821 (“Confronting the Soviet Union”)-829 (skim/skip “The End of the Grand
Alliance”), 852-854, 831-837, 856-861 (skip “Getting Into Vietnam,” p, 859).
George F. Kennan, The Sources of Soviet Conduct; Fidel Castro Denounces U.S. policy toward Cuba;
John F. Kennedy, “The Soft American;” John F. Kennedy, letter to Michelle Rochon.
Terms:
The Truman Doctrine
The Marshall Plan
containment
Berlin blockade
CIA, NSC, NATO
Jiang Jieshi, Mao Zedong
NSC-68, flexible response
Syngman Rhee, Kim Il Sung
Seoul, Pyongyang, 38th Parallel, Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Massive retaliation, Mutual Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)
HUAC, the “Hollywood Ten”
Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, the “pumpkin papers”
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Joseph McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings
“military industrial complex”
Bay of Pigs
Berlin Wall
Cuban Missile Crisis
Questions:
1. What U.S. foreign policy did George Kennan recommend? Why?
2. What two 1949 events can be seen as major Cold War setbacks for the United States? For what
reasons?
3. How did the outcome of World War II lead to Korea’s role in the Cold War? What was Korea’s
role? Why was General MacArthur fired in 1951?
4. How and why did the United States get involved in the affairs of Iran, Guatemala, and Egypt in
the 1950’s?
5. Who were the targets of the McCarthy hearings? How and why did the McCarthy era
ultimately end in 1954?
6. What factors made the 1960 election so close, and what was/were the decisive reason(s) why
John F. Kennedy won?
7. How did Kennedy make physical fitness a Cold War issue?
8. What were the main arguments of Fidel Castro's denunciation of U.S. policy?
9. Does Kennedy deserve to be known as one of the best Presidents in U.S. history? Why or why
not?
ASSIGNMENT #19: 1950’s CULTURE, CIVIL RIGHTS, GREAT SOCIETY
Readings:
Goldfield et. al, pp. 844 (“Reshaping Urban America”)-850, 862-871.
Beth Bailey, “Rebels Without a Cause?”; U.S. News and World Report’s Assessment of Television;
Congress Investigates Homosexuals as Subversives; Allen Ginsberg, “Howl;” Brown v. Board
of Education; Franklin McCain Remembers the Greensboro Sit-in; Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech; LBJ Declares War on Poverty.
Terms:
Federal Highway Act
Levittowns
Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate”
Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall
“Little Rock Nine”
de facto vs. de jure segregation
Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott
SCLC and SNCC
Lee Harvey Oswald
Warren Commission
Office of Economic Opportunity – Job Corps, Head Start, VISTA
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (really about Vietnam, but in these pages)
the “Daisy Ad”
Medicare and Medicaid
Questions:
1. In what ways did the Federal Highway Act change American culture and lifestyles?
2. What new consumer buying patterns emerged in the 1950’s?
3. What role did religion and churchgoing play in the suburbs?
4. What was the role of women the 1950’s? How did popular culture reflect and reinforce their
role?
5. How and why, according to Beth Bailey, did dating behavior change in the 1950's?
6. Why did U.S. News and World Report see television as a dangerous invention?
7. What arguments did Congressmen make to declare that homosexuals are dangerous? What
motivations, do you think, lie beneath these arguments?
8. Who rebelled against the conformity of the 1950’s? In what ways?
9. When and why did the Republican Party – the “party of Lincoln” – start becoming the party of
choice for many Southern whites?
10. How successful were the Great Society Programs? What main criticisms drove the backlash
against them?
11. What economic, political, and social factors ended liberalism’s golden age by 1968?
ASSIGNMENT #20: VIETNAM AND THE RISE OF THE NEW LEFT
Readings:
Goldfield et al., p. 859 (“Getting Into Vietnam”), pp. 880-887, 888 (“Minority Self-Determination”)890, 892-897 (stop at “Nixon and the Wider World”).
Betty Friedan, excerpts from The Feminine Mystique; The Redstockings Manifesto; Phyllis Schlafly
and the Power of the Positive Woman; Stokely Carmichael Explains “Black Power.”
Terms:
NLF/Vietcong
Gen. William Westmoreland/Robert McNamara
“search and destroy”
Napalm, Agent Orange
Selective Service
SDS/FSM/“counterculture”
Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique
NOW
The Pill
Title IX
Roe v. Wade
Stonewall
Black Power
Malcolm X/ Nation of Islam
Black Panthers
Cesar Chavez/UFW
AIM
Tet Offensive
James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan
Chicago convention/the “Yippies”/the Weather Underground
“Vietnamization”/the Nixon Doctrine
Cambodia bombings, Kent State and Jackson State
Questions:
1. What was the U.S. government’s objective in Vietnam? What got in the way of achieving it?
2. How did the draft and its exemptions cause rifts in American society?
3. To what degree was the mainstream feminist movement radical? Why did the movement creat
such a strong backlash?
4. How did the Black Power ideology affect black culture? What were the positives of the Black
Power movement? The negatives?
5. Be able to explain the various ways in which 1968 was such a pivotal year.
6. In what ways was George Wallace’s candidacy groundbreaking?
7. To what extent was “Vietnamization” successful? To what extent has it foreshadowed
contemporary U.S. foreign policy?
ASSIGNMENT #21: WATERGATE, CARTER, AND THE REAGAN ERA
Readings:
Goldfield et al., pp. 899-901, 904-907, 914-917, 920 (“Poverty and Prosperity”)-922, 924-926.
Senator Sam Ervin on Watergate; Ronald Reagan Calls for New Economic Policies; Congressional
Committee Reports on “Irangate.”
Terms:
Watergate
Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, NY Times v. Nixon
CREEP, the “plumbers”
Woodward and Bernstein
the “Saturday Night Massacre”
United States v. Nixon
Camp David Agreement
the Iranian Hostage Crisis
“Reaganomics”/ERTA
deregulation
SDI (“Star Wars”)
Reagan Doctrine
Iran-Contra Affair
Questions:
1. Be able to explain the major points leading from the 6/17/72 Watergate break-in to Nixon’s
resignation on 8/8/74.
2. How did Carter address the energy crisis? Who resisted him, and why?
3. What was the philosophy behind Reagan’s tax cuts? What was the outcome of the cuts?
4. What sectors of the economy were deregulated under Reagan?
5. Was Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra Affair an impeachable offense? Why or why not?
Congratulations! You have completed U.S. History*!