The Colonies Move Toward Independence contains 12 full-color transparencies (print books) or PowerPoint slides (eBooks), 28 reproducible pages including five pages of test material, and a richly detailed teacher's guide. This volume covers the colonies from 1763 through the writing of the Declaration of Independence and preparation for war.
“The Revolutionary War” provides a detailed overview of the American battle for independence and the forging of a nation. From the earliest skirmishes at Lexington and Concord to the decisive victory at Yorktown, to the writing of the Constitution and the struggles of early national America, this book tracks both the logistical and intellectual dimensions of the "revolution," which, as John Adams said, took place "in the hearts and minds of Americans . . . before a single drop of blood was shed." As much as it vividly documents the particulars of battle, it is the dizzying aftermath of the war and the complexities of fulfilling the "idea" of America that form the impressive substance of this book. Also discussed are the social, cultural, and artistic advances of the post-Revolutionary period, including women's suffrage and the beginning of public education, with special emphasis given to the "American Renaissance" and the rising of distinctly American literature.
The American Revolutionary War began when Massachusetts militiamen and British troops clashed at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Two months later, a much larger engagement occurred at Bunker Hill in Boston. The conflict then expanded into a continent-wide war for independence from Great Britain. Or so we are taught. A closer look at events in the South in the eighteen months following Lexington and Concord tells different story. The practice of teaching the Revolutionary War as one generalized conflict between the American colonies and Great Britain assumes the South's support for the Revolutionary War was a foregone conclusion. However, once shots were fired, it was not certain that the southern colonies would support the independence movement. What is clear is that both the fledgling American republic and the British knew that the southern colonies were critical to any successful prosecution of the war by either side. In March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776, historian Michael Cecere, consulting primary source documents, examines how Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia ended up supporting the colonies to the north, while East Florida remained within the British sphere. South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida all retained their royal governors through the summer of 1775, and no military engagements occurred in any of the southern colonies in the six months following the battles in Massachusetts. The situation changed significantly in the fall, however, with armed clashes in Virginia and South Carolina; by early 1776 the war had spread to all of the southern colonies except East Florida. Although their march to independence did not follow the exact route as the colonies to the north, events in the South pulled the southern colonists in the same direction, culminating with a united Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This book explores the crucial events in the southern colonies that led all but East Florida to support the American cause.
A book all Americans should read, Slave Nation reveals the key role racism played in the American Revolutionary War, so we can see our past more clearly and build a better future. In 1772, the High Court in London freed a slave from Virginia named Somerset, setting a precedent that would end slavery in England. In America, racist fury over this momentous decision united the Northern and Southern colonies and convinced them to fight for independence. Meticulously researched and accessible, Slave Nation provides a little-known view of the birth of our nation and its earliest steps toward self-governance. Slave Nation is a fascinating account of the role slavery played in the American Revolution and in the framing of the Constitution, offering a fresh examination of the "fight for freedom" that embedded racism into our national identity, led to the Civil War, and reverberates through Black Lives Matter protests today. "A radical, well-informed, and highly original reinterpretation of the place of slavery in the American War of Independence."—David Brion Davis, Yale University
The Nation Divides contains 12 full-color PowerPoint slides, 28 reproducible pages including five pages of test material, and a richly detailed teacher's guide. Among the topics covered in this volume are the rivalry of the north and south, the cotton kingdom, expansion of the United States, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Abraham Lincoln, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, the election of 1860, the underground railroad, and the abolitionist movement.
The Revolutionary War contains 12 full-color transparencies (print books) or PowerPoint slides (eBooks), 28 reproducible pages including five pages of test material, and a richly detailed teacher's guide. This volume covers the major military campaigns of the war and ends with the Treaty of Paris.
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's []Common Sense[], which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision. In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other "declarations" of 1776: the local resolutions -- most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries -- that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress's work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson. Maier also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing and celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the nineteenth century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society. Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do -- by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ -- we may actually be betraying its purpose and its power.
A groundbreaking history of the American Revolution that “vividly recounts Colonial women’s struggles for independence—for their nation and, sometimes, for themselves.... [Her] lively book reclaims a vital part of our political legacy" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this book, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. The women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers and fathers died. Yet Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
"The American Colonies" provides a detailed and richly illustrated overview of the trials of Europeans in the New World. From the earliest primitive encampments on the Atlantic seacoast to the settled societies of the later colonial period, this book vividly describes the disastrous first years, the strained reliance on native peoples, the horrors of the African slave trade, and deteriorating relations with England, which stand in marked contrast to the hope, strength, resilience, and determination with which colonialists carved a nation out of the North American wilderness. Challenging review questions encourage meaningful reflection and historical analysis. Maps, tests, answer key, and extensive bibliography are included.
