U.S. History Sourcebook -
Basic
Lucas
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Printed: March 23, 2011
Author
Rob Lucas
i
Contents
1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
4
Early Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
Pocahontas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
Passenger Lists to the New World
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10
The Puritans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
King Philip’s War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
The Salem Witch Trials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16
The First Great Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
20
Stamp Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
20
The Battle of Lexington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22
The Declaration of Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
Loyalists during the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28
Shays’s Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29
Federalists and Anti-Federalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
Slavery in the Constitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33
Hamilton versus Jefferson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
36
The Louisiana Purchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
37
3.10 Lewis and Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
41
Trail of Tears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
41
Nat Turner’s Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
43
Texas Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
Manifest Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
50
ii
Irish Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
John Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
61
Lincoln and Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
61
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
64
Emancipation Proclamation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
66
The Political Cartoons of Thomas Nast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
68
Andrew Johnson vs. Thaddeus Stevens
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
Sharecropping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
Reconstructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
74
78
Buffalo Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
Chinese Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
Friends of the Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
Jacob Riis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
87
Electoral College Maps –The Heyday of Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
Pullman Strike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
93
USS Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
97
The Spanish-American War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
99
102
Japanese Segregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Progressive Social Reformers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
The Progressives and Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Washington and Dubois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
112
The Palmer Raids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
The Espionage and Sedition Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
The League of Nations Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Prohibition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Chicago Race Riots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Women’s Suffrage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
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iv
Chapter 1
Basic - Introduction
1.1 Introduction
This book provides high school U.S. History teachers and students with sets of primary and secondary
sources about important topics. Some teachers will use it as a supplement to a traditional textbook.
For those looking to leave the textbook behind entirely, it will provide a course with basic structure and continuity, and will reduce the burden of finding new primary sources for each class meeting. However, it is not yet comprehensive enough to meet the coverage requirements of, for example, an Advanced Placement
test.
Reading Like a Historian
The methods used in this book draw on the latest research in history education, and particularly on the work of Stanford professor Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Group. Wineburg has
shown when reading documents, historians consistently engage in several characteristic behaviors that
non-historians do not—sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, and close reading.
• Sourcing – When reading a primary document, historians look first to its source information, antic-
ipate its perspective, and consider its trustworthiness. Sourcing questions should be answered after
reading the source information and headnote but before reading the document. Who created the
document? With what purpose? What was the intended audience? Is the document trustworthy?
• Contextualization – As they read and interpret a document, historians consider the historical context within which it was created. What was going on when this document was created? What were people
doing? What did people believe? Why might this document not provide the whole picture?
• Close reading – As they read and interpret a document, historians also try to understand the argument being made within the document and the rhetorical strategies being employed. What is the argument
being made in this document? What evidence is presented? What specific words are used?
• Corroboration – After reading multiple documents, historians consider how they relate to each other.
Do the sources agree with each other or are they in conflict? Are they reliable? Considering all of
the sources available, what can we say about the issues they address?
The texts in this book have been selected to cover important and interesting topics in U.S. history that allow students to practice these reading skills. The book is divided into chapters, each of which covers a historical period (e.g. the Civil War) and contains sections that address specific topics (e.g. the New York 1
City Draft Riots). Each section contains approximately 2-5 documents, which have been selected to be
read as a group. Each document is followed by questions for students to answer, most of which correspond to one of the four historical reading skills listed above—sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration. Some sections include ‘section questions’ which are more global and address all of the
documents in the set.
Advanced and Basic Versions
Document-oriented history teachers quickly learn that historic sources often use dated language that challenges some students and stymies others completely. To address this difficulty, the book is available in advanced and basic versions. The advanced book is a straightforward collection of excerpted documents.
The basic book, however, requires a bit more explanation. Most documents in the basic version have
been modified from the original text—sometimes radically—to make them more accessible to less profi-
cient readers. Some difficult words have been replaced, while others are underlined and defined below.
Complicated syntax has been simplified and sentences rearranged, but we have strived to preserve original meanings. Documents at the beginning of the book are more heavily modified than those at the end,
both because older documents are usually more difficult and because students’ reading skill is expected to improve as the course progresses. We encourage teachers of the basic book to explain to students that the documents have been modified, to have copies of original documents (i.e. the advanced book) available, and to periodically read aloud or distribute copies of the original documents to convey the flavor of the language, and to make clear exactly what is preserved and lost in modification. The questions that follow each document are identical in both versions.
The documents in this book were selected and modified by Stanford Ph.D. candidate Abby Reisman,
as part of her doctoral research, under the supervision of Sam Wineburg. The curriculum was piloted
in four San Francisco classrooms during the 2008-2009 school year, and post-tests showed statistically significant gains in both historical reasoning and general reading ability. A short promotional video, which includes interviews with students participating in the San Francisco pilot, is available at http:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWz08mVUIt8. Classroom-tested lesson plans for most of the documents in this book are available at http://sheg.stanford.edu, although there may be minor divergences between the sourcebook and lessons. The website also contains document sets extending from 1923 to the present that are not currently included in the sourcebook.
We have chosen to end this book in the year 1923 because documents from before that year belong to the public domain. After that point, the legal doctrine of ‘fair use’ permits the inclusion of limited excerpts from documents. Additionally, audio and video sources become important. As of this writing, such capacities are just beginning to be supported by CK-12’s Flexbook format, and most history education research has focused on the use of text and images. We hope eventually to extend the book’s coverage through the rest of the twentieth century.
Adding Sections
In the period from colonization to 1923, this sourcebook covers major events, but not all topics are addressed and coverage could be improved. Users of the textbook are invited to submit additional document sets,
which we will review for inclusion in the next edition of the book.
New document sets should address topics commonly mentioned in state or AP history standards. The
documents selected should not merely address the same topic but should be selected to be read as a
group and to facilitate the historical reading behaviors included above. Document sets should include (1) An introductory paragraph to provide background information and frame students’ reading, (2) Source
information for each document (3) Documents, excerpted as necessary to reach an appropriate length.
2
Documents may include text, images, sounds, or video, but their inclusion in the book must not violate copyright law. Eligible documents include those in the public domain, under a Creative Commons license, or available under legal ‘fair use’ doctrine. (4) Questions addressing the sources individually and as a group. Most questions should correspond to one of the four historical reading skills described above.
To Learn More
A further explanation of the teaching strategies used here can be found at http://historicalthinkingmatters.
org/, particularly in the introductory video, Why Historical Thinking Matters (http://historicalthinkingmatters.
org/why/). Much of the research informing this method is available in the book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, a collection of papers by Sam Wineburg.
3
Chapter 2
Colonial America
2.1 Early Maps
From the days of Columbus on, explorers and cartographers made maps of the New World. The two maps
below were made in 1636 and 1651. For context, recall that the Jamestown colony in Virginia was founded in 1608 and that the Mayflower landed in New England in 1620. Both of these maps show Virginia, but
they portray it very differently. Compare the maps, and consider why two maps of the same area would
be so different.
Virginia and Maryland – Gerhard Mercator
Source: A map titled Virginia and Maryland, made by Gerhard Mercator and published in 1636. (Figure
A Map of Virginia – Edward Williams
Source: Map of Virginia made by Edward Williams and published in 1651. (Figure 2.2).
Questions
1. These maps show the same land, but they were made 15 years apart. In what ways are the two maps
different?
2. Contextualize: How might attitudes toward Native Americans have changed between 1636 and
1651?
2.2 Pocahontas
In April 1607, colonists from the Virginia Company of London landed in Virginia. They would formally
establish the Jamestown Colony there the following year. Among the men was John Smith, a seasoned
27 − year old adventurer. Smith became one of the leaders of the colony, but in December 2007 he was
captured by a party of soldiers from the local Powhatan Indian tribe. As the story goes, Smith was set to be executed but was saved from death by Pocahontas, a 12 to 14 year old daughter of the tribe’s chief.
The story has become a significant part of American lore, but there is controversy among historians about whether the events actually happened and what they meant. The documents below include two accounts
4
Figure 2.1
5
Figure 2.2
6
by John Smith and excerpts by two modern historians. Read them and decide which historian makes the
most persuasive interpretation of the historical evidence.
A True Relation – John Smith
Source: Smith’s own words, from A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of note as hath
happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony, published in 1608.
Arriving in Werowocomoco, the emperor welcomed me with good words and great platters of
food. He promised me his friendship and my freedom within four days.... He asked me why we
came and why we went further with our boat.... He promised to give me what I wanted and
to feed us if we made him hatchets and copper. I promised to do this. And so, with all this
kindness, he sent me home.
Questions:
1. Sourcing: Who wrote this document? When?
2. Close Reading: According to A True Relation, did Pocahontas save John Smith’s life?
General History – John Smith
Source: From Smith’s later version of the story in General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, published in 1624. (Figure 2.3).
Title page from Smith’s General History.
They brought me to Meronocomoco, where I saw Powhatan, their Emperor. Two great stones
were brought before Powhatan. Then I was dragged by many hands, and they laid my head
on the stones, ready to beat out my brains. Pocahontas, the King’s dearest daughter took my
head in her arms and laid down her own upon it to save me from death. Then the Emperor
said I should live.
Two days later, Powhatan met me and said we were friends. He told me to bring him two guns
and a grindstone and he would consider me his son.
Questions:
1. Sourcing: Who wrote this document? When? How much time passed between the writing of A
True Relation and General History?
2. Close Reading: According to the General History, did Pocahontas save John Smith’s life?
Section Questions:
1. Corroboration: How is the story in John Smith’s General History different then the s