Guided Readings Guided Readings: Conflict over Ratifying the Constitution Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12 View these Guided Readings as a printable PDF.
Guided Readings Guided Readings: Federalists and Jeffersonians Economics, Government and Civics, World History Reading 1 Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia ...
Guided Readings Guided Readings: Impact of the Revolution on Women and African Americans Government and Civics 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Reading 1 I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Alexander Hamilton’s "gloomy" view of the American Revolution, 1780 Government and Civics By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Articles of Confederation, 1777 A day after appointing a committee to write the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress named another committee to write the Articles of Confederation. The members worked from June 1776 until November 1777, when...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Ratification of the US Constitution in New York, 1788 Government and Civics This unique copy of the US Constitution was printed by Claxton and Babcock in Albany, New York, between February 11 and March 21, 1788. Copies of the Constitution were widely distributed following the document’s signing by the members...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A plan for a new government, 1775 Government and Civics More than a decade before the Constitutional Convention in 1787—and months before the United States declared independence—John Adams wrote a plan for a new form of government for the American colonies. In it Adams described the basic...
Spotlight on: Primary Source George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786 Economics, Government and Civics 9 Of the nine presidents who were slaveholders, only George Washington freed all his own slaves upon his death. Before the Revolution, Washington, like most White Americans, took slavery for granted. At the time of the Revolution, one...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution, 1787 Government and Civics 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On May 25, 1787, the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention began meeting in a room, no bigger than a large schoolroom, in Philadelphia’s State House. They posted sentries at the doors and windows to keep their "secrets...
Spotlight on: Primary Source George Washington’s reluctance to become president, 1789 Government and Civics 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ From 1787 to 1789, as the Constitution was submitted for ratification by the states, most Americans assumed that George Washington would be the first president. In this April 1789 letter to General Henry Knox, his friend from the...