DEBATING THE DOCUMENTS: U.S. History

Each reproducible unit contains groups of documents with differing views, six worksheets (two interpretive, one comparative for each pair), a background essay, a teacher introduction, student directions, two DBQs with suggestions for writing, and a DBQ scoring guide. Each set comes with a guide with reproducible student pages that contains three whole-class debates.

The COLONIAL AMERICA–CIVIL WAR subset includes:

• THE PILGRIMS: Image and Reality
• BANISHED: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Crisis
• SLAVERY AND VIRGINIA’S ENLIGHTENED ARISTOCRACY
• THE COVENANT CHAIN: The Iroquois and Colonial America
• BEN FRANKLIN: A New American Identity?
• LOYALISTS AND PATRIOTS
• WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS: The Meaning of the Declaration
• WHAT DID THE GREAT AWAKENING AWAKEN?
• THE “GRAND COMPROMISE” AND THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION
• JOHN MARSHALL’S COURT
• “A KNACK AT CONTRIVING”: Why Americans Invented Things
• HENRY CLAY’S AMERICAN SYSTEM
• THE MONROE DOCTRINE: Was It Necessary?
• THE LOWELL EXPERIENCE
• JACKSON AND THE INDIANS
• REVIVALISTS AND UTOPIANS: Reform in Antebellum America
• THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
• CALHOUN VS. THE ABOLITIONISTS
• THE WAR WITH MEXICO
• UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
• “BLEEDING KANSAS”: A Failure of Compromise
• WAS JOHN BROWN A HERO?
• BLUE OR GRAY: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
• THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

The GILDED AGE–EARLY 2000s subset includes:

• THE IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON
• ROCKEFELLER: Monster Monopolist or Marketplace Hero?
• ARRIVAL: The Immigrant and the City
• THE HAYMARKET SQUARE RIOT
• WHY RECONSTRUCTION FAILED
• DEMOCRACY & THE RAILROADS: Friends or Foes?
• THE WEST: Paradise, or Paradise Lost?
• WHY FIGHT FOR CUBA?
• BRYAN’S CROSS OF GOLD
• HOW “PROGRESSIVE” WAS PROGRESSIVISM?
• WHY WOMEN WON THE VOTE
• SHOULD WILSON HAVE KEPT US OUT OF WAR?
• THE FIRST “RED SCARE”
• THE SCOPES TRIAL
• THE NEW DEAL: DID IT WORK?
• AMERICA FIRST: ISOLATIONISM AND WORLD WAR II
• THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT: Bigotry or Security?
• HOW THE WAR CHANGED AMERICA
• 1945: THE POST-WAR MOOD
• ANTI-COMMUNISM: Mass Hysteria or Reasonable Fear?
• MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND THE “BLACK POWER” DEBATE
• TET: Victory or Defeat?
• PLURIBUS AND UNUM: The Diversity Debate
• IDEALS AND VIOLENCE: The Sixties Youth Rebellion
• THE NEW FEMINISM AND ITS CRITICS
• REAGAN AND THE FALL OF COMMUNISM
• SUBURBIA: American Dream or Stifling Dead-End?