United States History I: Colonies to Reconstruction

This is Unit One of Social Sciences and History, part one of two: United States history from the first peoples to the War of Eighteen Twelve. Carry one idea through this lecture. The colonies were left alone for a century, and they came to treat that neglect as a right. Every attempt to end it drew a reply, each reply widened the circle of resistance, and the chain of measure and reply ran straight to a declaration. Then the people who had resisted central power had to build some of their own, and the trades they made are still the frame of the government. By the end you will be able to say why the New World's slavery was new and what crossed the Atlantic in each direction. To classify a colony by its founding purpose. To put the road to independence in order as cause and reply. To name what each of the Convention's three compromises traded. And to trace the first parties from Hamilton's program to the War of Eighteen Twelve.

Five entries on the world before the colonies: what the exam wants from this band, who was already here, why Europeans came, and what the crossing changed.

What the exam wants from this band.

SSH 0001 What the Exam Means by United States History

The exam gives United States history thirteen to fifteen percent of its questions, from the colonial period to the early twenty-first century, and this unit runs from the first peoples to eighteen seventy-seven. The questions test recognition of events, dates and causes rather than essays. Colonies, revolution, the early republic, the Civil War and Reconstruction, in that order: learn the chain, not the paragraph.

Who was already here.

SSH 0002 The Americas Before 1492

Complex societies rose and fell in the Americas long before Columbus. The Pueblo peoples and the city of Cahokia had already peaked, while the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán stood at its height in fourteen ninety-two, and the Inca linked one of history's largest empires with roads and armies, without the wheel. Europeans met very different peoples depending on where they landed. There was no single native America.

Why Europeans came at all.

SSH 0003 Why Europeans Sailed West

The Crusades gave western Europe a taste for Eastern goods, and the overland Silk Road grew costly and dangerous. Portugal sent ships around Africa; Ferdinand and Isabella hired Columbus to reach the East by sailing west. Spain's Reconquista ended in fourteen ninety-two, the year he sailed. Profit and religion drove the voyages together, and neither motive explains them alone.

What the crossing did to slavery.

SSH 0004 Slavery Before and After the Atlantic Crossing

West Africa practiced forms of slavery before fourteen ninety-two, and the anchor stresses that none was racial or hereditary. The New World form was new: based on race, permanent, and inherited, and the Middle Passage carried captured Africans across the Atlantic to plantations. The comparison is the anchor's. The course states it as such and softens neither half of it.

What else crossed the ocean.

SSH 0005 The Columbian Exchange, in One Line

The Columbian Exchange is the movement of plants, animals and diseases across the Atlantic after fourteen ninety-two. Europeans gained new foods; native peoples met smallpox, which nearly destroyed them. Horses went west, potatoes went east, and one side had no immunity. Unit six teaches the exchange fully from the world-history anchor. Here it explains why colonization met so little resistance.

Five entries on the colonies: what they were for, two English motives, the law England did not enforce, two movements of mind, and how to sort a colony by its founding.

The purpose a colony served.

SSH 0006 What Colonies Were For

European rulers believed colonies existed to enrich the home country, a view called mercantilism that treated wealth as fixed. Spain's encomienda granted rights to native labor, and joint stock companies spread investors' risk. Gold and silver went to Spain; furs to France and the Dutch. Unit six defines mercantilism in full. Its colonial logic is what the Navigation Acts later enforced.

Two English colonies, two motives.

SSH 0007 Jamestown and Plymouth: Two Motives

After Roanoke vanished in fifteen eighty-seven, England founded Jamestown in sixteen oh seven and Plymouth in sixteen twenty. The Virginia Company built Jamestown for profit; Puritan Separatists built Plymouth to worship their own way. Tobacco in the Chesapeake, congregations in New England. Both fought native neighbors, and King Philip's War of sixteen seventy-five to seventy-six nearly drove the English from New England.

The law England wrote and did not enforce.

SSH 0008 Navigation Acts and Salutary Neglect

From sixteen fifty-one England passed Navigation Acts to channel colonial trade through England, but enforced them loosely, a practice later called salutary neglect. Colonial ships traded freely while the law said otherwise. The Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty-eight limited the monarchy by the Bill of Rights of sixteen eighty-nine. Colonists came to expect the neglect, and ending it caused the crisis.

Two movements that reshaped colonial minds.

SSH 0009 Great Awakening and Enlightenment

The First Great Awakening was an eighteenth-century revival that prized emotional, experiential faith over doctrine. The Enlightenment prized reason and science over tradition. Both spread across the British Atlantic at once: a revival meeting in one town, Franklin's experiments in another. They pulled in different directions yet shared one effect. Each taught colonists to judge authority for themselves.

Sorting a colony by why it was founded.

SSH 0010 Classifying a Colony by Its Founding Purpose

The exam asks why a colony was founded far more often than when, and the anchor supplies five purposes: profit for investors, a religious community, a proprietary grant, a trading post for furs, and a military or mission outpost. To classify one, ask who paid for it and what they expected back. A London company sending young men to grow a cash crop is profit, the Jamestown pattern. Families building a church community that bars dissenters are religious, the Plymouth pattern. A royal grant to one family who sells land is proprietary, the Pennsylvania pattern. A river fort of traders with native partners bringing pelts is a trading post, the New Netherland pattern. St. Augustine and Santa Fe are Spanish outposts for conversion and control. Purposes drifted, as Georgia's turn to slavery shows. Classify by the founding, then note the drift.

Seven entries on the road to independence: the war that left a debt, the taxes that answered it, the replies that widened, the fighting, who it divided, and the whole chain in order.

The war that left Britain a debt and a continent.

SSH 0011 The French and Indian War and the Debt

Britain and France fought for eastern North America for almost eighty years. The French and Indian War, seventeen fifty-four to sixty-three, ended it: the Treaty of Paris removed New France and gave Britain everything east of the Mississippi, with native allies tipping the balance midway through. The debt and the Proclamation Line of seventeen sixty-three began the reforms colonists resented. Here the neglect ends.

The tax that united the colonies in protest.

SSH 0012 The Stamp Act and No Taxation Without Representation

The Stamp Act of seventeen sixty-five was a direct tax on paper and documents. The Virginia Resolves answered that colonists could be taxed only by their own representatives, the Sons of Liberty took to the streets, and the Daughters refused British cloth. Parliament repealed the act in seventeen sixty-six. The Townshend Acts followed, and on March fifth, seventeen seventy, soldiers killed five Bostonians: the Boston Massacre.

The tea, and the punishment for destroying it.

SSH 0013 From the Tea to the Coercive Acts

The Tea Act of seventeen seventy-three led Bostonians to destroy a tea cargo. Parliament answered with four Coercive Acts punishing Massachusetts, a closed port, a rewritten government, quartered troops; with the Quebec Act, colonists called them the Intolerable Acts. The acts recast a decade of argument as a conspiracy against liberty, the anchor's phrase. Loyal subjects began fearing their empire.

The colonies' first joint government.

SSH 0014 The First Continental Congress

In seventeen seventy-four, representatives from twelve of the thirteen colonies met as the First Continental Congress. Their Declaration and Resolves demanded repeal of every repressive act since seventeen seventy-three, and they called for militias and a boycott, with the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts supplying the plan. The delegates still called themselves British subjects. A de facto government had formed before anyone declared independence.

The war from Lexington to Yorktown.

SSH 0015 Declaration, Saratoga, France, Yorktown

Fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April seventeen seventy-five, and Congress declared independence in July seventeen seventy-six. Britain took New York, but Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga in October seventeen seventy-seven brought France into the war, while von Steuben drilled a professional army at Valley Forge. The southern campaign ended when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, and the war closed in seventeen eighty-three.

Who the war divided and who it changed.

SSH 0016 Loyalists, Patriots, and Who the War Changed

The Revolution divided colonists into Patriots and Loyalists from every class, and Loyalists left for England, Canada and the West Indies. Dunmore's Proclamation offered freedom to enslaved people who fought for Britain. The war opened new roles for women and Black people. Sample question nine asks how war widened women's work; this is the first instance, and unit two carries the world wars.

Putting the road to independence in order.

SSH 0017 Sequencing the Road to Independence, 1763–1776

Exam questions on the Revolution hand you four events and ask for the order, or name one and ask what it answered. The chain has a logic: each British measure raised money or asserted control, each colonial answer widened the circle of resistance, and the next measure punished the answer. Hold it as cause and reply and the order recovers itself. Sixty-three, the Treaty of Paris and the Proclamation Line. Sixty-five, the Stamp Act, answered by the Virginia Resolves; sixty-six, repeal. Townshend, answered by non-importation; seventy, the Boston Massacre. Seventy-three, the Tea Act; seventy-four, the Coercive Acts, answered by the First Continental Congress. April seventy-five, Lexington; July seventy-six, the Declaration. Given Stamp, Coercive, Massacre and Tea, the order is Stamp, Massacre, Tea, Coercive. The trap is the repeal: the Stamp Act was gone before Townshend passed. Anchor the chain at sixty-five and seventy-four and the middle falls into place. This is the lecture's idea made into a procedure.

Four entries on building a republic: the idea the states built on, the league that failed, the three trades that made the Constitution, and the price of ratifying it.

The idea the new states built on.

SSH 0018 Republicanism Against Democracy

Republicanism held that representatives, not a monarch, should govern, and that citizens owed civic virtue, with Washington as the model of the public virtue the republic prized. Democracy meant majority rule, which many leaders feared as mob rule, so voting went to property holders. Little changed for women, Black people and native peoples. Coverture erased a married woman's legal identity; citizenship excluded non-White people.

The first national government, and why it failed.

SSH 0019 The Articles of Confederation and Shays' Rebellion

The Articles of Confederation made a weak national league that left power in the states. Neither the states nor the Confederation could solve the postwar economic crisis, which in western Massachusetts produced Shays' Rebellion, farmers closing courts to stop foreclosures. The rebellion did not create the Constitution by itself. It convinced enough leaders that the Articles could not be patched.

What the Convention traded.

SSH 0020 The Convention's Three Compromises

Delegates from twelve states met in Philadelphia in seventeen eighty-seven to revise the Articles and instead wrote a new constitution, the oldest written national constitution still in force. Three compromises made it possible, and the exam asks what each traded. The Connecticut Compromise, Roger Sherman's proposal, settled representation: an equal Senate, a House by population. The three-fifths compromise settled how enslaved people would count toward that population: three of every five, for representation and taxation together. The Electoral College settled how the president would be chosen: by electors allotted by representation, not by popular vote. To place a compromise, ask which fear it answered: small states feared being outvoted; southern states wanted their enslaved population counted and northern states did not; delegates who distrusted majority rule wanted a filter between voters and the presidency. Then ask who gained: small states, slaveholding states, and those who feared democracy. The three-fifths compromise did not make an enslaved person three-fifths of a citizen in law. It counted people who could not vote toward the power of those who could.

The price of ratification.

SSH 0021 Federalists, Anti-Federalists, and the Bill of Rights

Federalists backed the seventeen eighty-seven Constitution and a strong central government; Anti-Federalists wanted stronger states. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, adopted in seventeen ninety-one, answered many of their fears: speech, worship, jury trial and arms, guaranteed after ratification. Unit seven teaches the ratification argument in full. Here the promise of amendments carried the vote.

Three entries on the first party era: the program that split the founders, the decade that doubled the nation, and the second war with Britain.

The program that split the founders into parties.

SSH 0022 Hamilton's Program and the First Parties

Hamilton's financial program to stabilize the economy divided Federalists, who backed it, from Democratic-Republicans, who said the Constitution did not permit it. Whiskey distillers resisted a federal tax and Washington marched to stop them. Only free White men meeting tax or property tests could vote. Jay's Treaty eased relations with Britain and Pinckney's opened New Orleans; foreign policy became a party question at once.

Jefferson's decade.

SSH 0023 Jefferson: 1800, Louisiana, Marbury

The Quasi-War with France marked the Federalist high tide. The election of eighteen hundred passed power peacefully to Jefferson's party, and the Louisiana Purchase of eighteen oh three doubled the nation, suiting Jefferson's agrarian republic. Marbury against Madison, the same year, established judicial review. The Court's power to void laws came from the Court itself, not from the Constitution's text.

The second war with Britain.

SSH 0024 The War of 1812

Britain, fighting Napoleon, impressed American sailors and armed Native enemies on the frontier, so the United States fought a second war of independence. Tecumseh was killed and the Western Confederacy's fight for the Northwest was lost. The boundaries ended where they began. The war's importance was identity: Key's poem and a surge of national pride left the country free to turn west.

Look at what you can now do. You can say why the New World's slavery was new, racial, permanent and inherited, and name what crossed the Atlantic in each direction. You can classify a colony by its founding purpose by asking who paid for it and what they expected back. You can put the road to independence in order as measure and reply, anchored at sixty-five and seventy-four, which is the lecture's one idea turned into a procedure. You can name what each of the Convention's three compromises traded and which fear it answered. And you can trace the first parties from Hamilton's program through Jefferson's decade to the War of Eighteen Twelve, which settled no boundary and settled an identity. Part two opens with how to read a founding document for its claim, then follows the market revolution, Jackson, Clay's compromises, and the chain from compromise to war.