What actions are necessary in order to start a new government? What would one of the major concerns be in preserving the new government and country? What would be the role of the leader or president of the country?
All of the major candidates for president in the 1824 election claimed allegiance to the same party, the Democratic-Republicans. What distinguished the candidates from each other? What were the important issues in the campaign of 1824?
What provisions in the U.S. Constitution are relevant to the debate over the Sedition Act? For this lesson, students will read brief excerpts from actual debates in the House of Representatives as the legislators attempted to work with the version of the bill "Punishment of Crime" (later known as the Sedition Act) already passed by the Senate.
This lesson looks at Thomas Paine and at some of the ideas presented in his pamphlet, "Common Sense," such as national unity, natural rights, the illegitimacy of the monarchy and of hereditary aristocracy, and the necessity for independence and the revolutionary struggle.
What arguments were put forth in objection to the Sedition Act? Supporters of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed the Sedition Act was designed to repress political opposition to President John Adams and the Federalists.
American foreign resonates with the debate over U.S. entry into the League of Nations-collective security versus national sovereignty, idealism versus pragmatism, the responsibilities of powerful nations, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals, the idea of America. Understanding the debate over the League and the consequences of its failure provides insight into international affairs in the years since the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students read the words and listen to the voices of some central participants in the debate over the League of Nations.
The rivalry between the Federalists and Republicans in the early days of the American Republic was bitter. What were the key positions of the parties? How important to the parties' positions were their basic attitudes toward constitutional interpretation (Federalists, broad interpretation / Democratic-Republicans, strict interpretation)? Which positions of either party resonate in the politics of today?
This lesson will examine the most famous speech in American history to understand how Lincoln turned a perfunctory eulogy at a cemetery dedication into a concise and profound meditation on the meaning of the Civil War and American union.
Americans affirmed their independence with the ringing declaration that “all men are created equal.” Some of them owned slaves, however, and were unwilling to give them up as they gave speeches and wrote pamphlets championing freedom, liberty, and equality. So “to form a more perfect union” in 1787, certain compromises were made in the Constitution regarding slavery. This settled the slavery controversy for the first few decades of the American republic, but this situation changed with the application of Missouri for statehood in 1819.
