U.S. History I

U.S. History I is a survey course on events from the earliest explorations of the Americas up through the creation of the United States Constitution.\

We begin with an exercise in which students pick twenty persons with whom they will be dropped off on a faraway island from which they will never return. They must each decide how their group will organize itself, how they will make decisions, how they will deal with getting food and shelter, how they will settle disputes and so on. (This exercise will be revisited at the end of the course.)

We then go through the early explorations of America and the early attempts at colonization there. We study the English settlement of Virginia and Massachusetts more closely, paying particular attention to the development of ideas that will flower in the Declaration and Constitution. (We take advantage of our location to do some field trips to see colonial houses.) We take a less detailed look at other settlements in America and at the differing lifestyles developing in different regions of the country.

We then consider the struggle for economic and political dominance between European powers during the colonial period, and then zero in on the French and Indian War, the struggle between France and England for dominance in North America. (After we read about this war, we watch the film The Last of the Mohicans, which shows, among other things, the differing points of view of the Americans and British and the ineffectiveness of conventional European warfare against the Indians.)

We consider how the attitude of Americans towards their British protectors changed after the French gave up control of the land west of the Appalachians and go on to the accumulating grievances of the Americans against their mother country. We read about the outbreak of hostilities in Concord and Lexington, and watch the film April Morning. We read about the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the organization of the Continental Army, and the early battles of the American Revolution. When we go on to the later battles, which are concentrated in the southern colonies, we watch The Patriot, which, though idealized and simplified, is based on real situations and gives some sense of the kind of fighting that went on in South Carolina and, ultimately, Virginia.

After reading about the Revolution, we come again to the question of how a people will organize themselves in a new land. We read about the Articles of Confederation and note its weaknesses, and move on to reading about the Constitutional Convention, and the decisions made by the framers about how the new United States should be governed. We spend time learning about the essential structure of our government, the three branches and their functions, and the checks and balances between them.

We take the time to review the amendments of the Bill of Rights, and the students do a project involving research on one right and the Supreme Court cases that have affected its interpretation.

Then we return to the initial exercise, and discuss again what kinds of people students would choose to take with them to a faraway island, and how they would organize themselves once they got there. How would decisions be made? Who would decide the rules and who would enforce them? What kinds of rights would be guaranteed?

My hope is that, by the time we finish, the students will have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the kinds of ideas and experiences that went into the formation of the United States and its Constitution, and will be able to argue from evidence about what they like and don’t like about their government.