National History Standards, Part II United States History Standards for Grades 5-12

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
9 (Spring 1995). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1995, Organization of American Historians

Era 1: Three Worlds Meet (Beginnings to 1620)

Standard 1: The characteristics of societies in the Americas, western Europe, and West Africa that increasingly interacted after 1450

Standard 2: Early European exploration and colonization; the resulting cultural and ecological interactions

Era 2: Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763)

Standard 1: The early arrival of Europeans and Africans in the Americas, and how these people interacted with Native Americans

Standard 2: How political institutions and religious freedom emerged in the North American colonies

Standard 3: How the values and institutions of European economic life took root in the colonies; how slavery reshaped European and African life in the Americas

Era 3: Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)

Standard 1: The causes of the American Revolution, the ideas and interests involved in forging the revolutionary movement, and the reasons for the American victory

Standard 2: How the American Revolution involved multiple movements among the new nation's many groups to reform American society

Standard 3: The institutions and practices of government created during the revolution and how they were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system

Era 4: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Standard 1: United States territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861, and how it affected relations with external powers and Native Americans

Standard 2: How the industrial revolution, the rapid expansion of slavery, and the westward movement changed the lives of Americans and led toward regional tensions

Standard 3: The extension, restriction, and reorganization of political democracy after 1800

Standard 4: The sources and character of reform movements in the antebellum period and what the reforms accomplished or failed to accomplish

Era 5: Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Standard 1: The causes of the Civil War

Standard 2: The course and character of the Civil War and its effects on the American people

Standard 3: How various reconstruction plans succeeded or failed

Era 6: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

Standard 1: How the rise of big business, heavy industry, and mechanized farming transformed the American peoples

Standard 2: Massive immigration after 1870 and how new social patterns, conflicts, and ideas of national unity developed amid growing cultural diversity

Standard 3: The rise of the American labor movement, and how political issues reflected social and economic changes

Standard 4: Federal Indian policy and United States foreign policy after the Civil War

Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America
(1890-1930)

Standard 1: How Progressives and others addressed problems of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and political corruption

Standard 2: The changing role of the United States in world affairs through World War I

Standard 3: How the United States changed from the end of World War I to the eve of the Great Depression

Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II
(1929-1945)

Standard 1: The causes of the Great Depression and how it affected American society

Standard 2: How the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state

Standard 3: The origins and course of World War II, the character of the war at home and abroad, and its reshaping of the U.S. role in world affairs

Era 9: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)

Standard 1: The economic boom and social transformation of postwar America

Standard 2: The postwar extension of the New Deal

Standard 3: The Cold War and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts in domestic and international politics

Standard 4: The struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Standard 1: Major developments in foreign and domestic policies during the Cold War era

Standard 2: Major social and economic developments in contemporary America

The study of American history properly begins with the first peopling of the Americas some 30,000 years ago. After students learn about the spread of human societies and the rise of diverse cultures in the Americas, they are prepared to delve into a historical convergence of European, African, and Native American peoples, beginning in the late 15th century. In studying the beginnings of American history it is best for students to take a hemispheric approach. This broader context of American history avoids provincialism and drives home the point that the English, as latecomers to the Americas, were deeply affected by what had already occurred in vast regions of the hemisphere.

Although Europeans initiated the changes in the late 1400s that brought about the "great convergence," students will not grasp this collision of cultures without understanding the extensiveness and complexity of the societies of pre-Columbian America and West Africa. Developing an appreciation of these pre-1492 societies will dispel stereotyped images of American Indians and Africans and prepare students for the complexity of the often violent meeting of these three worlds.

By studying the colonization of the Americas to 1620, students will embark upon a continuing theme--the making of the American people. As a people, we were composed from the beginning of several ethnic and racial strains. The consequences of that beginning, both immediate and long-term, were to raise issues and tensions among us that are still unresolved.

By studying early European exploration, colonization, and conquest, students will learn about five long-range changes set in motion by the Columbian voyages. First, the voyages initiated the redistribution of the world's population, with several million Europeans and at least 10-12 million Africans relocating on the west side of the Atlantic and the catastrophic losses suffered by the indigenous peoples. Second, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas led to the rise of the first global empires in world history--empires that for the next four centuries would colonize and Europeanize the world to a considerable degree. Third, the Columbian voyages sparked a commercial expansion in Europe that would hasten the rise of capitalism. Fourth, the voyages led in time to the planting of English settlements where ideas of representative government and religious toleration would grow haltingly and, over several centuries, would inspire similar transformations in other parts of the world. Lastly, Europe's arrival on the west side of the Atlantic gave rise to systems of forced labor in the Americas at a time when slavery and serfdom were waning in Europe.

Students Should Understand: The characteristics of societies in the Americas, western Europe, and West Africa that increasingly interacted after 1450.

1A Demonstrate understanding of commonalities, diversity, and change in the societies of the Americas from their beginnings to 1620 by:

• Drawing upon data provided by archaeologists and geologists to explain the origins and migration from Asia to the Americas and contrasting them with Native Americans' own beliefs concerning their origins in the Americas. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Tracing the spread of human societies and the rise of diverse cultures from hunter-gatherers to urban dwellers in the Americas. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
• Comparing and explaining the common elements of Native American cultures such as gender roles, family organization, religion, values, and environmental interaction and their striking diversity in languages, shelter, tools, food, and clothing. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Comparing commonalities and differences between Native American and European outlooks, and values on the eve of "the great convergence." [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas and values]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of the characteristics of western European societies in the age of exploration by:

• Analyzing how geographical, scientific, and technological factors contributed to the age of exploration. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Analyzing relationships among the rise of centralized states, the development of urban centers, the expansion of commerce, and overseas exploration. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Appraising customary European family organization, gender roles, acquis
  ition of private property, relationship to the environment, and ideas about other cultures. [Examine the influences of ideas]
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of the characteristics of West African societies in the era of European contact by:

• Describing the physical and cultural geography of West Africa and analyzing its impact on settlement patterns and trade. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Locating the political kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, and Benin, and urban centers such as Timbuktu and Jenne, and analyzing their importance and influence. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Describing how family organization, gender roles, and religion shaped West African societies. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Appraising the influence of Islam and Muslim culture on West African societies. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: Early European exploration and colonization; the resulting cultural and ecological interactions.

2A Demonstrate understanding of how the stages of European oceanic and overland exploration from 1492 to 1700 occurred amid international rivalries by:

• Tracing routes taken by early explorers, from the 15th through the 17th centuries, around Africa, to the Americas, and across the Pacific. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Evaluating the significance of Columbus's voyages and his interactions with indigenous peoples. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Appraising the role of national and religious rivalries in the age of exploration and evaluate their long-range consequences. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Evaluating the consequences of the "Columbian Exchange." [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the Spanish conquest of the Americas by:

• Describing the social composition of the early settlers and comparing their motives for exploration and colonization. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Explaining and evaluating the Spanish interactions with such people as Aztecs, Incas, and Pueblos. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Describing the evolution and long-term consequences of labor systems such as encomienda and slavery in Spanish America. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
  
  

The study of the colonial era in U.S. history is essential because the foundations for many of the most critical developments in our subsequent national history were established in those years. The long duration of the nation's colonial period--nearly two centuries--requires that teachers establish clear themes. A continental and Caribbean approach best serves a full understanding of this era because North America and the closely linked West Indies were an international theater of colonial development.

One theme involves the intermingling of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans. Necessarily, this topic must address two of the most tragic aspects of American history: first, the violent conflicts between whites and indigenous peoples, the devastating spread of European diseases among Native Americans, and the gradual dispossession of Indian land; second, the traffic in the African slave trade and the development of a slave labor system in many of the colonies. While coming to grips with these tragic events, students should also recognize that Africans and Native Americans were not simply victims, but were intricately involved in the creation of colonial society and a new, hybrid American culture.

A second theme is the development of political and religious institutions and values. The roots of representative government are best studied regionally, so that students can appreciate how colonizers in New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the South differed in the ways they groped their way toward mature political institutions. In studying the role of religion--especially noteworthy are the foundations of religious freedom, denominationalism, and the many-faceted impact of the Great Awakening--a comparative geographic approach can also be fruitful. Comparison to Dutch, French, and Spanish colonies can be fruitful.

A third theme is the economic development of the colonies through agriculture and commerce. A comparative approach to French, Spanish, Dutch, and English colonies, and a regional approach to the English mainland and West Indian colonies, as part of a developing Atlantic economy, will also be instructive. As in studying politics and religion, students should ponder how economic institutions developed--in ways that were typically European or were distinctively American--and how geographical variations--climate, soil conditions, and other natural resources--helped shape regional economic development.

Students Should Understand: The early arrival of Europeans and Africans in the Americas, and how these people interacted with Native Americans.

1A Demonstrate understanding of how diverse immigrants affected the formation of European colonies by:

• Comparing English, French, and Dutch motives for exploration and colonization with those of the Spanish. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Comparing the social composition of English, French, and Dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Tracing the arrival of Africans in the English colonies in the 17th century and the rapid increase of slave importation in the 18th century. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of family life, gender roles, and women's rights in colonial North America by:

• Explaining how and why family and community life differed in various regions of colonial North America. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Analyzing gender roles in different regions of colonial North America and how these roles changed from 1600 to 1760. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing women's property rights before and after marriage in the colonial period. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of the European struggle for control of North America by:

• Analyzing relationships between Native Americans and Spanish, English, French, and Dutch settlers. [Compare and contrast differing values and behaviors]
  
• Comparing how English settlers interacted with Native Americans in New England, mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, and lower South colonies. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Analyzing how various Native American societies changed as a result of the expanding European settlements and how they influenced European societies. [Examine the influence of ideas and interests]
  
• Analyzing the significance of the colonial wars before 1754 and the causes, character, and outcome of the Seven Years War [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Analyzing Native American involvement in the colonial wars and evaluating the consequences for their societies. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: How political institutions and religious freedom emerged in the North American colonies.

2A Demonstrate understanding of the rise of individualism, the roots of representative government, and how political rights were defined by:

• Analyzing how the rise of individualism affected the ideal of community. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
• Explaining how the growth of individualism challenged European ideas of hierarchy and deference and contributed to the idea of participatory government. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Compare how early colonies were established and governed. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, behaviors, and institutions]
  
• Explaining the concept of the "rights of Englishmen" and the impact of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution on the colonies. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
• Analyzing how gender, property ownership, religion, and legal status affected political rights. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of religious diversity in the colonies and how ideas about religious freedom evolved by:

• Describing religious groups in colonial America and the role of religion in their communities. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining how Puritanism shaped New England communities and how it changed during the 17th century. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, and institutions]
  
• Tracing and explaining the evolution of religious freedom in the English colonies. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
• Explaining the impact of the Great Awakening on colonial society. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of political conflicts in the colonies by:

• Explaining the social, economic, and political tensions that led to violent conflicts between the colonists and their governments. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining how the conflicts between legislative and executive branches contributed to the development of representative government. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: How the values and institutions of European economic life took root in the colonies; how slavery reshaped European and African life in the Americas.

3A Demonstrate understanding of colonial economic life and labor systems in the Americas by:

• Analyzing mercantilism and explaining how it influenced patterns of economic activity. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Identifying the major economic regions in the Americas and explaining how labor systems shaped them. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Explaining the development of an Atlantic economy in the colonial period. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of economic life and the development of labor systems in the English colonies by:

• Explaining how environmental and human factors accounted for differences in the economies that developed in the colonies of New England, in mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, and lower South. [Compare and contrast differing behaviors and institutions]
  
• Analyzing how the early Navigation Acts affected economic life in the colonies. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Comparing the characteristics of free labor, indentured servitude, and chattel slavery. [Compare and contrast different sets of ideas]
  
• Explaining the shift from indentured servitude to chattel slavery in the southern colonies. [Challenge arguments of historical inevitability]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of African life under slavery by:

• Analyzing the forced relocation of Africans to the English colonies in North America and the Caribbean. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Analyzing how African Americans drew upon their African past to develop a new culture. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Assessing the contribution of enslaved and free Africans to economic development in different regions of the American colonies. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Analyze overt and passive resistance to slavery. [Compare and contrast differing values, behaviors, and institutions]
  
  
  
  

The American Revolution is of signal importance in the study of U.S. history. First, it severed the colonial relationship with England and legally created the United States. Second, the revolutionary generation formulated the political philosophy and laid the institutional foundations for the system of government under which we live. Third, the revolution was inspired by ideas concerning natural rights and political authority that were transatlantic in reach, and its successful completion affected people and governments over a large part of the globe for many generations. Lastly, it called into question long-established social and political relationships--between master and slave, man and woman, upper class and lower class, officeholder and constituent, and even parent and child--and thus demarcated an agenda for reform that would preoccupy Americans down to the present day. In thinking about the causes and outcomes of the American Revolution, students need to confront the central issue of how revolutionary the Revolution actually was. In order to reach judgments about this, they necessarily will have to see the Revolution through different sets of eyes--enslaved and free African Americans, Native Americans, white men and women of different social classes, religions, ideological dispositions, regions, and occupations.

Students can appreciate how agendas for redefining American society in the postwar era differed by exploring how the Constitution was created and how it was ratified after a dramatic ideological debate in virtually every locale in 1787-88. While broaching the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights as the culmination of the most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, students should also ponder the paradox that the Constitution sidetracked the movement to abolish slavery that had taken rise in the revolutionary era. Nor should they think that ratification of the Constitution ended debate on governmental power; rather, economic, regional, social, and ideological tensions spawned continuing debates over the meaning of the Constitution.

In studying the post-revolutionary generation, students can understand how the embryo of the American two-party system took shape, how political turmoil arose as Americans debated the French Revolution, and how the Supreme Court rose to a place of prominence. Politics, political leadership, and political institutions have always bulked large in the study of this era, but students will also need to understand other less noticed topics: the military campaigns against Native American nations, the emergence of free black communities, and the democratization of religion.

Students Should Understand: The causes of the American Revolution, the ideas and interests involved in forging the revolutionary movement, and the reasons for the American victory.

1A Demonstrate understanding of the causes of the American Revolution by:

• Explaining the consequences of the Seven Years War and the overhaul of English imperial policy following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, demonstrating the connections between the antecedent and consequent events. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Comparing the arguments advanced by defenders and opponents of the new imperial policy on the traditional rights of English people and the legitimacy of asking the colonies to pay a share of the costs of empire. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Reconstructing the chronology of the critical events leading to the outbreak of armed conflict between the American colonies and England. [Establish temporal order]
  
• Analyzing the connection between political and religious ideas and economic interests in bringing about revolution. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Reconstructing the arguments among Patriots and Loyalists about independence and drawing conclusions about how the decision to declare independence was reached. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence by:

• Explaining the major ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence and their sources. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Demonstrating the fundamental contradictions between the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the realities of chattel slavery. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Drawing upon the principles in the Declaration of Independence to construct a sound historical argument regarding whether it justified American independence. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Comparing the Declaration of Independence with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and constructing an argument evaluating their importance to the spread of constitutional democracies in the 19th and 20th centuries. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of the factors affecting the course of the war and contributing to the American victory by:

• Analyzing the character and roles of the military, political, and diplomatic leaders who helped forge the American victory. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
• Comparing and explaining the different roles and perspectives in the war of men and women including white settlers, free and enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the problems of financing the war and dealing with wartime inflation, hoarding, and profiteering. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Explaining the American victory. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
  

1D Demonstrate understanding of how American relations with European powers affected the character and outcomes of the American Revolution by:

• Analyzing United States relationships with France, Holland, and Spain during the Revolution and the contributions of each European power to the American victory. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the terms of the Treaty of Paris, and their implications for U.S. relationships with Native Americans and with the European powers that continued to hold territories and interests in North America. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: How the American Revolution involved multiple movements among the new nation's many groups to reform American society.

2A Demonstrate understanding of the revolution’s effects on social, political, and economic relations among different social groups by:

• Comparing the reasons influencing many whites, African Americans, and Native Americans to remain loyal to the British during the American Revolution and the consequences for each of the American victory. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Comparing to what extent the revolutionary goals of different groups were achieved and how the Revolution altered social, political, and economic relations among them. [Compare and contrast differing values, behaviors, and institutions]
  
• Analyzing the revolutionary hopes of enslaved and free African Americans, the reformist calls for the abolition of slavery during the revolution, and the gradual post-revolutionary abolition of slavery in the northern states. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the ideas on which women drew in arguing for new roles and rights; the conventions of the 18th century that limited their aspirations and achievements; and the extent to which women were successful in gaining their rights after 1776. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the contributions of African-American leaders in the early republic and the importance of the African-American institutions developed in the free black communities of the North. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: The institutions and practices of government created during the revolution and how they were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system.

3A Demonstrate understanding of government-making, at both national and state levels by:

• Analyzing the arguments over the Articles of Confederation. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing at least two state constitutions and explaining why they differed. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Assessing the accomplishments and failures of the Continental Congress. [Evaluate major debates among historians]
  
• Assessing the importance of the Northwest Ordinance. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of the issues involved in the creation and ratification of the United States Constitution and the new government it established by:

• Analyzing the factors involved in calling the Constitutional Convention, including Shays’s Rebellion. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Analyzing the alternative plans considered by the delegates and the major compromises agreed upon to secure the approval of the Constitution. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the fundamental ideas behind the distribution of powers and the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing the arguments of Federalists and Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates and assessing their relevance in late 20th-century politics. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights and its continuing significance by:

• Analyzing the significance of the Bill of Rights and its specific guarantees. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing whether the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) threatened those rights and the issues they posed in the absence of judicial review of acts of Congress. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Analyzing issues addressed in recent court cases involving the Bill of Rights to assess their continuing significance today. [Identify relevant historical antecedents]
  
  

3D Demonstrate understanding of the development of the first American party system by:

• Explaining the development of the two-party system, although political factions were widely deplored. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Comparing the leaders and the social and economic composition of each party. [Compare and contrast differing personalities, behaviors, and institutions]
  
• Comparing the different views of the two parties on the central economic and foreign policy issues of the 1790s. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
  

3E Demonstrate understanding of the development of the Supreme Court's powers and significance from 1789 to 1820 by:

• Appraising the significance of John Marshall's precedent-setting decisions in establishing the Supreme Court as an independent and equal branch of the U.S. government. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
• Tracing the evolution of the Supreme Court's powers during the 1790s and early 19th century and analyzing its influence today. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
  
  

The new American republic prior to the Civil War experienced dramatic territorial expansion, economic growth, and industrialization. The increasing complexity of American society, the growth of regionalism, and the cross-currents of change that are often bewildering require the development of several major themes to enable students to sort their way through the six decades that brought the United States to the eve of the Civil War.

One theme is the vast territorial expansion between 1800 and 1861, as restless white Americans pushed westward across the Appalachians, then across the Mississippi, and finally on to the Pacific Ocean. But students also need to study how white Americans, animated by land hunger and the ideology of "Manifest Destiny," forced the removal of many Indian nations in the Southeast and Old Northwest, acquired a large part of Mexico through the Mexican-American War, and engaged in abrasive racial encounters with Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese immigrants, and others in the West.

A second theme confronts the economic development of the expanding American republic--a complex and fascinating process that fed growing regional tensions. In the North, the first stage of industrialization brings students face to face with the role of technology in historical change and how economic development has had profound environmental effects. In studying the rise of immigrant-filled cities, the "transportation revolution," the creation of a market system, and the proliferation of family farming in newly opened territories, students will appreciate how Tocqueville might have reached the conclusion that the Americans seemed at one time "animated by the most selfish cupidity; at another by the most lively patriotism." In studying the expanding South, students must understand the enormous growth of slavery as an exploitative and morally corrupt economic and social system; but they should also comprehend how millions of African Americans struggled to shape their own lives as much as possible through family, religion, and resistance to slavery.

A third theme can be organized around the extension, restriction, and reorganization of political democracy after 1800. The rise of the second party system and modern interest-group politics mark the advent of modern politics in America. However, students will see that the evolution of political democracy was not a smooth, one-way street as free African Americans were disenfranchised in much of the North and women's suffrage was blocked.

Connected to all of the above is the theme of reform, for the rapid transformation and expansion of American society brought forth one of the greatest bursts of reformism in American history. Emerson captured the vibrancy of this era in asking, "What is man born for but to be a reformer." Students will find that the attempts to complete unfinished agendas of the revolutionary period and new reforms necessitated by the rise of factory labor and rapid urbanization are all predecessors of social movements—such as the civil rights movement and feminism that are still part of our contemporary society.

Students Should Understand: United States territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861, and how it affected relations with external powers and Native Americans.

1A Demonstrate understanding of the international background and consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, War of 1812, and the Monroe Doctrine by:

• Analyzing Napoleon's reasons for selling Louisiana to the United States. [Draw upon the data in historical maps]
  
• Comparing the arguments advanced by Democratic Republicans and Federalists regarding the acquisition of Louisiana. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the consequences of the Louisiana Purchase for United States politics, economic development, and race relations, and describing its impact on Spanish and French inhabitants. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Identifying the origins and explaining the provisions of the Monroe Doctrine. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing President Madison's reasons for declaring war in 1812 and the sectional divisions over the war. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Assessing the interests and actions of Native Americans in the war. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of federal and state Indian policy and the strategies for survival forged by Native Americans by:

• Comparing the policies toward Native Americans pursued by presidential administrations through the Jacksonian era. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Comparing federal and state Indian policy and explaining Whig opposition to the removal of Native Americans. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Analyzing the impact of the removal and resettlement on Native Americans such as the Cherokee and the Choctaw. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Explaining and evaluating the various strategies of Native Americans such as accommodation, revitalization, and resistance. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, and behaviors]
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the nation's expansion to the Northwest, and the Mexican-American War by:

• Explaining the economic, political, racial, and religious roots of Manifest Destiny and analyzing how the concept influenced the westward expansion of the nation. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the diplomatic and political developments that led to the resolution of conflict with Britian and Russia in the period 1815-1850. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Explaining the causes of the Mexican-American War, the sequence of events leading to the outbreak of hostilities, and the provisions and consequences of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. [Analyze multiple causation]
  

Students Should Understand: How the industrial revolution, the rapid expansion of slavery, and the westward movement changed the lives of Americans and led toward regional tensions.

2A Demonstrate understanding of how the factory system and the transportation and market revolutions shaped regional patterns of economic development by:

• Explaining the major technological developments which revolutionized land and water transportation and analyzing how they transformed the economy, affected international markets, and affected the environment. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating national and state policies regarding a protective tariff, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining how economic policies related to expansion served different regional interests and contributed to growing political and sectional differences in the antebellum era. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Comparing how patterns of economic growth and recession affected territorial expansion and community life in the North, South, and West. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing how the factory system affected gender roles and changed the lives of men, women, and children. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating the factory system from the perspectives of owners and workers and assessing its impact on the rise of the labor movement in the antebellum period. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the first era of American industrialization by:

• Identifying and explaining the factors that caused rapid urbanization and comparing the new industrialized centers with the old commercial cities. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing how rapid urbanization, immigration, and industrialization disrupted the social fabric of early 19th-century cities. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the growth of free African-American communities in the cities and analyzing the rise of white racial hostility. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing popular and high culture in the growing cities. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of the rapid growth of slavery after 1800 and how African Americans coped with the "peculiar institution" by:

• Explaining how the cotton gin and the opening of new lands in the South and West led to the advance of "King Cotton" and to the increased demand for slaves. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the argument that the institution of slavery retarded the emergence of capitalist institutions and values in the South. [Evaluate major debates among historians]
  
• Describing the plantation system and the roles of the owner and his family, of hired white workers, and of enslaved African Americans. [Compare and contrast differing values, behaviors, and institutions]
  
• Identifying the various ways in which African Americans resisted the conditions of their enslavement and analyzing the consequences of violent uprisings. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating how enslaved African Americans used religion and family to create a viable culture to ameliorate the effects of slavery. [Obtain historical data]
  

2D Demonstrate understanding of the settlement of the West by:

• Explaining the lure of the West while comparing the illusions of migrants with the reality of the frontier. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing cultural interactions among diverse groups in the trans-Mississippi region. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Assessing the degree to which political democracy was a characteristic of the West, and evaluating the factors influencing political and social conditions on the frontier. [Differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations]
  
• Examining the origins and political organization of the Mormons, explaining the motives for their trek west, and evaluating their contributions to the settlement of the West. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  

Students Should Understand: The institutions and practices of government created during the revolution and how they were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system.

3A Demonstrate understanding of the changing character of American political life in "the age of the common man" by:

• Relating the increasing popular participation in state and national politics to the spreading idea that adult white males were entitled to political participation. [Identify relevant historical antecedents]
  
• Explaining the contradictions between the movement for universal white male suffrage and the disenfranchisement of free African Americans. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Analyzing the influence of the West on the heightened emphasis on equality in the political process. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the combination of sectional, cultural, economic, and political factors that contributed to the formation of the Democratic, Whig, and "Know-Nothing" parties. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Evaluating the importance of state and local issues, the rise of interest-group politics, and the style of campaigning in increasing voter participation. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Explaining why the election of Andrew Jackson was considered a victory for the "common man." [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Analyzing how Jackson's veto of the U.S. Bank recharter and his actions in the nullification crisis contributed to the revolt against "King Andrew" and the rise of the Whig party. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of how the debates over slavery influenced politics and sectionalism by:

• Explaining the Missouri Compromise and evaluating its political consequences. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Explaining how tariff policy and issues of states’ rights influenced party development and promoted sectional differences in the antebellum period. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing how the debates over slavery--from agitation over the "gag rule" of the late 1830s through the war with Mexico--strained national cohesiveness and fostered rising sectionalism. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
  

Students Should Understand: The sources and character of reform movements in the antebellum period and what the reforms accomplished or failed to accomplish.

4A Demonstrate understanding of the abolitionist movement by:

• Analyzing the impact of the Haitian Revolution and the ending of the foreign slave trade on African Americans. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the changing ideas about race and nationality, and assessing the influence of proslavery and antislavery ideologies. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the fundamental beliefs of abolitionism and comparing the antislavery positions of the "immediatists" and "gradualists" within the movement. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Comparing the positions of African American and white abolitionists on the issue of the African American's place in society. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas and values]
  
  

4B Demonstrate understanding of how the Second Great Awakening, transcendentalism, and utopianism affected reform by:

• Explaining the importance of the Second Great Awakening and assessing the importance of its principal leaders. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Assessing the impact of the Second Great Awakening on antebellum issues such as public education, temperance, women's suffrage, abolition, and commercialization. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing ideas concerning the individual, society, and nature expressed in the literary works of major transcendentalists. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Identifying the major utopian experiments and analyzing the reasons for their formation. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Examining the relevance of the Great Awakeners' ideas for contemporary American society. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
  

4C Demonstrate understanding of changing gender roles and the roles of different groups of women by:

• Comparing gender roles in the North, South, and West in the antebellum period. [Compare and contrast differing values]
  
• Analyzing the roles of women in the reform movements of education, abolition, temperance, and women's suffrage. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing the changing roles of women of different racial, regional, and social groups and their involvement in the reform movements of the antebellum era. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the goals of the 1848 Seneca Falls "Declaration of Sentiments" and evaluating its impact on society. [Reconstruct the literal meaning of a historical passage]
  
• Evaluating the links between the antebellum women's movement for equality and 20th-century feminism. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  

he Civil War was perhaps the most momentous event in American history. The survival of the United States as one nation was at risk, and on the outcome of the war depended the nation's ability to bring to reality the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and human dignity.

The war put constitutional government to its severest test as a long festering debate over the power of the federal government versus state rights reached a climax. Its enormously bloody outcome preserved the Union while releasing not only four million African Americans but the entire nation from the oppressive weight of slavery. The war can be studied in several ways: as the final, violent phase in a conflict of two regional subcultures; as the breakdown of a democratic political system; as the climax of several decades of social reform; and as a pivotal chapter in American racial history. In studying the Civil War, students have many opportunities to study heroism and cowardice, triumph and tragedy, and hardship, pain, grief, and death wrought by conflict. Another important topic is how the war necessarily obliged both northern and southern women to adapt to new and unsettling situations.

As important as the war itself, once the Union prevailed, was the tangled problem of Reconstruction. Through examining the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments--a fundamental revision of the Constitution--students can see how African Americans hoped for full equality. They can assess the various plans for Reconstruction that were contested passionately. The retreat from Radical Reconstruction--the first attempt at establishing a biracial democracy--should be of concern to all students. They should learn how southern white resistance and the withdrawal of federal supervision resulted in the "redemption" of the South through the disfranchisement of African Americans, the end of their involvement in Reconstruction state legislatures' greater racial separation, the rise of white intimidation and violence, and the creation of black rural peonage.

Balancing the successes and failures of Reconstruction should test the abilities of all students. Too much stress on the unfinished agenda of the period can obscure the great changes actually wrought. The legacies of the era of war and reconstruction needs to be considered with reference to the North and West as well as the South.

Students Should Understand: The causes of the Civil War.

1A Demonstrate understanding of how the North and South differed and how politics and ideologies led to the Civil War by:

• Identifying and explaining the economic, social, and cultural differences between the North and the South. [Compare and contrast differing values and institutions]
  
• Analyzing the reasons for the disruption of the second American party system in the 1850s and explaining how they led to the ascent of the Republican party. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Explaining how events after the Compromise of 1850 contributed to increasing sectional polarization. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the importance of the "free labor" ideology in the North and its appeal in preventing the further extension of slavery in the new territories. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the causes of the Civil War and evaluating the importance of slavery as a principal cause of the conflict. [Compare competing historical narratives]
  
• Charting the secession of the southern states, explaining the process and reasons for secession. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

Students Should Understand: The course and character of the Civil War and its effects on the American people.

2A Demonstrate understanding of how the resources of the Union and Confederacy affected the course of the war by:

• Comparing the human resources of the Union and the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War and assessing the tactical advantages of each side. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Identifying the innovations in military technology and explaining their impact on humans, property, and the final outcome of the war. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Evaluating how political, military, and diplomatic leadership affected the outcome of the war. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Evaluating provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's reasons for issuing it, and its significance. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Describing the position of the major Indian nations during the Civil War and explaining the effects of the war upon these nations. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the social experience of the war on the battlefield and homefront by:

• Comparing the motives for fighting and the daily life experiences of Confederates with those of white and African-American Union soldiers. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Analyzing the reasons for the northern draft riots. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Evaluating the need for the Union to curb wartime civil liberties. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Comparing women's homefront and battlefront roles in the Union and the Confederacy. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Explaining the effects of the Civil War on civilians and identifying the human costs of the war in the North and the South. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
  

Students Should Understand: How various reconstruction plans succeeded or failed.

3A Demonstrate understanding of the political controversy over Reconstruction by:

• Contrasting the Reconstruction policies advocated by Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and sharply divided Congressional leaders, while assessing these policies as responses to changing events. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Analyzing the escalating conflict between President Johnson and Republican legislators, and explaining the reasons for and consequences of Johnson's impeachment and trial. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the provisions of the 14th and 15th amendments and the political forces supporting and opposing each. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Evaluating why the Republican party abandoned African Americans in the South and analyzing the causes and consequences of the Compromise of 1877. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the role of violence and the tactics of the "redeemers" in regaining control over the southern state governments. [Interrogating historical data]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of the Reconstruction programs to transform social relations in the South by:

• Explaining the economic and social problems facing the South and appraising their impact on different groups of people. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Evaluating the goals and accomplishments of the Freedmen's Bureau. [Hold interpretations of history as tentative]
  
• Describing the ways in which African Americans laid the foundation for the modern black community during Reconstruction. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
• Analyzing how African Americans attempted to improve their economic position during Reconstruction and explaining the factors involved in their quest for land ownership. [Analyze multiple causation]
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of the successes and failures of Reconstruction in the South, North, and West by:

• Evaluating to what extent northern capital and entrepreneurship stimulated economic development in the postwar South. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Examining the progress of "Black Reconstruction" and legislative reform programs promoted by reconstructed state governments. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Evaluating Reconstruction as a revolution. [Evaluate major debates among historians]
  
• Assessing how the political and economic position of African Americans in the northern and western states changed during Reconstruction. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Analyzing how the Civil War and Reconstruction changed gender roles and status in the North and West. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating why corruption increased in the postwar period. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
  

From the era of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, the United States underwent an economic transformation that involved the maturing of the industrial economy, the rapid expansion of big business, the development of large-scale agriculture, and the rise of national labor unions and pronounced industrial conflict.

Students can begin to see a resemblance to possibilities and problems that our society faces today. The late 19th century marked an outburst of technological innovation, which fueled headlong economic growth and material benefits for many Americans. Yet, the advances in productive and extractive enterprises that technology permitted also had ecological effects that Americans were just beginning to confront. In the last third of the 19th century, the rise of the American corporation and the advent of big business brought about a concentration of the nation's productive capacities in many fewer hands. Mechanization brought farming into the realm of big business and turned the U.S. into the world's premier producer of food--a position it has never surrendered.

This period also witnessed unprecedented immigration and urbanization, both of which were indispensable to industrial expansion. American society became more diverse as immigrants arrived from southern and eastern Europe--and also from Asia, Mexico, and Central America, creating a new American mosaic. The old Protestant European Americans’ sway over the diverse peoples of this nation would never be the same.

In studying the paradoxical legacies of this period students will find that what many at the time thought was progress was regarded by many others as retrogressive. First, the disruptive effects of agricultural modernization on family farms were manifold, and they led American farmers to organize protest movements as never before. Second, the dizzying rate of expansion was accomplished at the cost of the wars against the Plains Indians, which produced the "second great removal" of indigenous peoples from their ancient homelands and ushered in a new federal Indian policy that would last until the New Deal. Third, the social problems that accompanied the nation's industrial development fueled the rise of national labor unionism and unprecedented clashes in industrial and mining sites between capital and labor. Fourth, after the Civil War, women reformers suffered an era of retrenchment on issues concerning economic and political rights. Lastly, the wrenching economic dislocations of this period and the social problems that erupted in rural and urban settings captured the attention of reformers and politicians and gave rise to third-party movements and the Progressive movement.

Students Should Understand: How the rise of big business, heavy industry, and mechanized farming transformed the American peoples.

• 1A Demonstrate understanding of the connections between industrialization, the rise of big business, and the advent of the modern corporation by:
  
• Explaining how technological, transportation, communication, and marketing improvements and innovations transformed the American economy in the late 19th century. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing the various types of business organizations. [Compare and contrast differing institutions]
  
• Evaluating the careers of prominent industrial and financial leaders. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Explaining how business leaders sought to limit competition and maximize profits in the late 19th century. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Comparing the ascent of business entrepreneurs today with those of a century ago. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of how rapid industrialization affected urban politics, living standards, and opportunity at different social levels by:

• Explaining how geographic factors and rapid industrialization created different kinds of cities in diverse regions of the country. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Tracing the migration of people from farm to city and their adjustment to urban life. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Analyzing how industrialization and urbanization affected the division of wealth, living conditions, and economic opportunity. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Analyzing how urban political machines gained power and how they were viewed by immigrants, middle-class reformers, and political bosses. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining how urban dwellers dealt with the problems of financing, governing, and policing the cities. [Evaluate alternative courses of actions]
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of how agriculture, mining, and ranching were transformed by:

• Explaining the major geographical and technological influences affecting farming, mining, and ranching. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Explaining the conflicts that arose during the settlement of the "last frontier" among farmers, ranchers, and miners. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Analyzing the role of the federal government, the problem of aridity, and the cross-cultural encounters between diverse people in the development of the West. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Explaining how commercial farming differed in the Northeast, South, Great Plains, and West in terms of crop production, farm labor, financing, and transportation. [Formulate historical questions]
  
• Evaluating the gender and ethnic diversity of farmers, miners, and ranchers in the West. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the significance of farm organizations. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
  

1D Demonstrate understanding of how industrialism, urbanization, large-scale agriculture, and mining affected the ecosystem and initiated an environmental movement by:

• Providing examples of pollution and the depletion of natural resources during the period 1870-1900 and analyzing their environmental costs. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Explaining how rapid industrialization, extractive mining techniques, and the "gridiron" pattern of urban growth affected the scenic beauty and health of city and countryside. [Compare and contrast differing values and behaviors]
  
• Explaining the origins of environmentalism and the conservation movement in the late 19th century. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

Students Should Understand: Massive immigration after 1870 and how new social patterns, conflicts, and ideas of national unity developed amid growing cultural diversity.

2A Demonstrate understanding of the sources and experiences of the new immigrants by:

• Distinguishing between the "old" and "new" immigration in terms of its volume and the newcomers' ethnicity, religion, language, and place of origin. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Tracing the patterns of immigrant settlements in different regions of the country. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
• Analyzing the obstacles, opportunities, and contributions of different immigrant groups. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Evaluating how Catholic and Jewish newcomers responded to discrimination and internal divisions in their new surroundings. [Obtain historical data]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of Social Darwinism, race relations, and the struggle for equal rights and opportunities by:

• Explaining the ideas of the Social Darwinists and their opponents. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing political, social, and economic discrimination against African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans in different regions of the country. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Analyzing the arguments and methods by which various minority groups sought to acquire equal rights and opportunities. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of how new cultural movements at different social levels affected American life by:

• Describing how regional artists and writers portrayed American life in this period. [Read historical narratives imaginatively]
  
• Investigating mass entertainment and leisure activities at different levels of American society. [Draw upon visual sources]
  
• Listing the new forms of popular culture and explaining the reasons for their development. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining Victorianism and its impact on manners and morals. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

Students Should Understand: The rise of the American labor movement, and how political issues reflected social and economic changes.

3A Demonstrate how the "second industrial revolution" changed the nature and conditions of work by:

• Assessing the effects of the rise of big business on labor and explaining the change from workshop to factory in different regions of the country. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining how gender, race, ethnicity, and skill affected employment in different regions of the country. [Formulate historical questions]
  
• Analyzing how working conditions changed and how the workers responded to deteriorating conditions. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing the causes and consequences of the employment of children in the industrial workplace. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of the rise of national labor unions and the role of state and federal governments in labor conflicts by:

• Analyzing how "reform unions" and "trade unions" differed in terms of their agendas for reform and for organizing workers by race, skill, gender, and ethnicity. [Compare and contrast differing values and behaviors]
  
• Explaining the ways in which management in different regions and industries responded to efforts to organize workers. [Formulate historical questions]
  
• Analyzing the causes and effects of labor conflicts. [Assess cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the response of management and government at different levels to labor strife in different regions of the country. [Compare competing historical narratives]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of how Americans grappled with the social, economic, and political problems of the late 19th century by:

• Explaining how Democrats and Republicans responded to civil service reform, monetary policy, tariffs, and business regulation. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the causes and effects of the depressions of 1873-79 and 1893-97 and the ways in which government, business, labor, and farmers responded. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the political, social, and economic roots of Populism. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the Omaha Platform of 1892 as a statement of grievances and an agenda for reform. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Analyzing the issues and results of the 1896 election and determining to what extent it was a turning point in American life. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating the successes and failures of Populism. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

Students Should Understand: Federal Indian policy and United States foreign policy after the Civil War.

4A Demonstrate understanding of various perspectives on federal Indian policy, westward expansion, and the resulting struggles by:

• Identifying and comparing the attitudes and policies toward Native Americans by government officials, the U.S. Army, missionaries, and settlers. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Comparing survival strategies of different Native American societies in this era. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Evaluating the legacy of 19th-century federal Indian policy. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
  

4B Demonstrate understanding of the roots and development of American expansionism and the causes and outcomes of the Spanish-American War by:

• Tracing the acquisition of new territories. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]
  
• Describing how geopolitics, economic interests, racial ideology, missionary zeal, nationalism, and domestic tensions combined to create an expansionist foreign policy. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating the causes, character, and objectives of the Spanish-American War. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Explaining the causes and consequences of the Filipino insurrection. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

The study of the emergence of modern America begins with the Progressive Era, which deserves careful study because it included the nation's most vibrant set of reform ideas and campaigns since the 1830s-40s. Progressives were a diverse lot with various agendas that were sometimes contradictory, but all reformers focused on a set of corrosive problems arising from rapid industrialization, urbanization, waves of immigration, and business and political corruption. Students need to appreciate how central these were to Progressivism. A distinctively female reform culture powerfully shaped the movement.

Two of the problems confronted by Progressives are still central today. First, the Progressives faced the dilemma of how to maintain the material benefits flowing from the industrial revolution while bringing the powerful forces creating those benefits under democratic control and enlarging economic opportunity. Second, Progressives faced the knotted issue of how to maintain democracy and national identity amid an increasingly diverse influx of immigrants and amid widespread political corruption and the concentration of political power.

Students cannot fully understand the Progressive movement without considering its limitations, particularly its antagonism to radical labor movements and indifference to the plight of African Americans and other minorities. As in so many aspects of American history, it behooves students to understand different perspectives—in this case on the reform impulse of the early 20th century. Progressivism brought fusion in some areas of reform, but it also created fissures. Among those was the ongoing, heated controversy about female equality, particularly in the area of economic protectionism.

All issues of American foreign policy in the 20th century have their origins in the emergence of the U.S. as a major world power in the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century and in the involvement of the U.S. in World War I. The American intervention in World War I then cast the die for the United States as a world power for the remainder of the century.

In the postwar period, the prosperity of the 1920s and the domination of big business and Republican politics are worthy of study, but the most compelling stories that will capture students' attention reside in the cultural and social realms. First, students should be fascinated with the women's struggle for equality, which had political, economic, and cultural dimensions. Second, students should understand how radical labor movements and radical ideologies provoked widespread fear and even hysteria. Third, they need to study the recurring racial tension that led to black nationalism and the Harlem Renaissance and the first great northward migration of African Americans on the one hand and the resurgence of the KKK on the other hand. Fourth, they need to understand the powerful movement to Americanize a generation of immigrants and the momentous closing of the nation's gates through severe retrenchment of the open-door immigration policies. Lastly, they should examine the continuing tension among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, most dramatically exemplified in the resurgence of Protestant fundamentalism.

Students Should Understand: How Progressives and others addressed problems of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and political corruption.

1A Demonstrate understanding of the origin of the Progressives and the coalitions they formed to deal with issues at the local and state levels by:

• Examining the social origins of the Progressives. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Explaining how intellectuals and religious leaders laid the groundwork and how publicists spread the word of defects in urban industrial society and suggested remedies. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
• Evaluating Progressive attempts to restore democracy at the local and state levels. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Evaluating Progressive attempts to regulate big business, curb labor militancy, and protect the rights of workers and consumers. [Evaluate alternative courses of action]
  
• Evaluating Progressive attempts at social and moral reform. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Analyzing Progressive programs for assimilating the influx of immigrants before World War I. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of Progressivism at the national level by:

• Evaluating the presidential leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson in terms of their effectiveness as spokespersons for Progressivism and passage of reform measures. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
• Explaining why the election of 1912 was a pivotal campaign for the Progressive movement at the national level. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Comparing the New Nationalism, New Freedom, and Socialist agendas for change. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Describing how the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th amendments reflected the ideals and goals of Progressivism. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Explaining how the decisions of the Supreme Court affected Progressivism. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of the limitations of Progressivism and the alternatives offered by various groups by:

• Examining the perspectives of African Americans on Progressivism and their alternative programs. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Evaluating the critique of the Progressive movement by various labor organizations and the examining programs they offered. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Examining issues raised by women but ignored by mainstream Progressives. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Evaluating the changing attitude toward Native American assimilation under Progressivism and the consequences of the change. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
  

Students Should Understand: The changing role of the United States in world affairs through World War I.

2A Demonstrate understanding of how the American role in the world changed in the early 20th century by:

• Analyzing the reasons for the Open Door Policy. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Evaluating Theodore Roosevelt's Big Stick diplomacy in the Caribbean and comparing it to his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Explaining United States relations with Japan and the evolution and significance of the "Gentlemen's Agreement." [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Evaluating how Taft's Dollar Diplomacy differed from Roosevelt's Big Stick diplomacy. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Evaluating Wilson's moral diplomacy, especially in relation to the Mexican Revolution. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the causes of World War I and why the United States intervened by:

• Explaining the causes of World War I in 1914 and the reasons for the declaration of United States neutrality. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Describing the course of World War I and its impact on the world prior to U.S. entry. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the impact of United States public opinion on the Wilson administration's evolving foreign policy, 1914-1917. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Evaluating Wilson's leadership during the period of neutrality and his reasons for intervention. [Assess the importance of the individual]
  
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of the impact at home and abroad of United States involvement in World War I by:

• Explaining U.S. military and economic mobilization for war and the role of labor, women, and African Americans in the war effort. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Analyzing the impact of public opinion and government policies on constitutional interpretation and civil liberties. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Explaining how the American Expeditionary Force contributed to the Allied victory. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Evaluating the significance of the Russian Revolution, its impact on the war, and on the foreign policies of the United States and Allied powers. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Evaluating Wilson's Fourteen Points, negotiation of the Versailles Treaty, and the national debate over treaty ratification and the League of Nations. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
  

Students Should Understand: How the United States changed from the end of World War I to the eve of the Great Depression.

3A Demonstrate understanding of the cultural clashes and their consequences in the postwar era by:

• Examining the "red scare" and Palmer raids as a reaction to Bolshevism. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Analyzing the factors that lead to immigration restriction and the closing of the "Golden Door. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Examining race relations, including increased racial conflict, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the emergence of Garveyism. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Examining the clash between traditional moral values and changing ideas as exemplified in the Scopes Trial and Prohibition. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the emergence of the "New Woman" and challenges to Victorian values. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of how a modern capitalist economy emerged in the 1920s by:

• Explaining how inventions, technological innovations, and principles of scientific management transformed production and work. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Examining the changes in the modern corporation, including labor policies and the advent of mass advertising and sales techniques. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the new downtowns and suburbs and how they changed urban life. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of the development of mass culture and how it changed American society by:

• Analyzing how radio, movies, and popular magazines and newspapers created mass culture. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the emergence of distinctively American art and literature including the contributions of the Harlem Renaissance and the "Lost Generation." [Formulate historical questions]
  
• Examining how increased leisure time promoted the growth of professional sports, amusement parks, and national parks. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

3D Demonstrate understanding of politics and international affairs in the 1920s by:

• Evaluating the waning of Progressivism and the "return to normalcy." [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing the effects of woman suffrage on American society. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Describing the goals and evaluating the effects of Republican foreign policy in the 1920s. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

The Great Depression and the New Deal deserve careful attention for four reasons. First, Americans in the 1930s endured the greatest economic crisis in American history. Second, the depression wrought deep changes in people's attitudes toward government's responsibilities. Third, organized labor acquired new rights. Fourth, the New Deal set in place legislation that reshaped modern American capitalism.

The effect of the Great Depression on people's lives was one of the great shaping experiences of American history, ranking with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the industrial revolution. More than Progressivism, the Great Depression brought about changes in the regulatory power of the federal government and in the government's role in superimposing relief measures on the capitalist system, bringing the U.S. into a mild form of welfare state capitalism, such as had appeared earlier in all of the industrial European nations. This era provides students with ample opportunities to test their analytic skills as they assay Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership, the many alternative formulas for ending the Great Depression, and the ways in which the New Deal affected women, racial minorities, children, and other groups.

World War II deserves careful attention as well. Although it was not the bloodiest in American history, it solidified the nation's role as a global power and ushered in social changes that established reform agendas that would occupy the United States for the remainder of the 20th century. The role of the United States in World War II was epochal for its defense of democracy in the face of totalitarian aggression. Yet students should learn about the denial of the civil liberties of interned Japanese Americans and the irony of racial minorities fighting for democratic principles overseas that they were still denied at home. Students will need to assess carefully the course of the war, the collapse of the Grand Alliance, and its unsettling effects on the postwar period. Also, they should evaluate the social effects of war on the homefront, internal migration to war production centers, the massive influx of women into previously male job roles, and the attempts of African Americans and others to obtain desegregation of the armed forces and end discriminatory hiring.

Students Should Understand: The causes of the Great Depression and how it affected American society.

1A Demonstrate understanding of the causes of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression by:

• Explaining the "trickle down" economic policies of the Coolidge-Mellon years and their economic impact on wealth distribution, investment, and taxes in the period 1925-1929. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Analyzing the causes and consequences of the stock market crash of 1929. [Compare competing historical narratives]
  
• Evaluating Hoover's response to the Great Depression and explaining the reasons for the deepening crisis in the period 1929-1933. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Evaluating the major causes of the Great Depression. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Explaining the global context of the depression and the reasons for the worldwide economic collapse. [Evaluate major debates among historians]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of how American life changed during the depression years by:

• Explaining the effects of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl on American farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Analyzing the impact of the Great Depression on industry and workers and explaining the response of local and state officials in combating the resulting economic and social crises. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Analyzing the impact of the Great Depression on the American family and gender roles. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the impact of the Great Depression on African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the cultural life of the depression years in art, literature, and music and evaluating the government's role in promoting artistic expression. [Draw upon visual, literary, and musical sources]
  
  

Students Should Understand: How the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state.

2A Demonstrate understanding of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal by:

• Contrasting the background and leadership abilities of Franklin D. Roosevelt with those of Herbert Hoover. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Analyzing the link between the early New Deal and Progressivism. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Contrasting the "first" and "second" New Deals and evaluating the success of the relief, recovery, and reform measures associated with each. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the factors contributing to the forging of the Roosevelt coalition in 1936 and explaining its electoral significance in subsequent years. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the impact of the New Deal on African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and women. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Evaluating the role and contributions of Eleanor Roosevelt to the New Deal. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the impact of the New Deal on workers and the labor movement by:

• Explaining the impact of the New Deal on American workers and the labor movement. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the emergence of labor militancy and the struggle between craft and industrial unions. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Evaluating the commitment of labor unions to organizing African Americans, Mexican Americans, and women. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the impact of the New Deal on nonunion workers in the period 1933-40. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of opposition to the New Deal, the alternative programs of its detractors, and the legacy of the "Roosevelt Revolution" by:

• Explaining the reasoning of the Supreme Court decisions on the early New Deal. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Evaluating Roosevelt's response to the Court's invalidation of the early New Deal. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the opposition to the New Deal. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas and values]
  
• Evaluating the significance and legacy of the New Deal. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
  

Students should understand: The origins and course of World War II, the character of the war at home and abroad, and its reshaping of the U.S. role in world affairs.

3A Demonstrate understanding of the international background of World War II by:

• Analyzing the factors contributing to the rise of Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism in the war period. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Explaining the breakdown of the Versailles settlement and League of Nations in the 1930s. [Challenge the arguments of historical inevitability]
  
• Explaining President Roosevelt's emphasis on hemispheric solidarity as exemplified in the Good Neighbor Policy. [Draw upon data in historical maps]
  
• Analyzing the reasons for American isolationist sentiment in the interwar period and its effects on international relations and diplomacy. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Evaluating the Roosevelt administration's response to aggression in Europe, Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1941. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Analyzing the growing tensions with Japan in East Asia. Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of World War II and how the Allies prevailed by:

• Explaining Axis and Allied military strategy and contrasting military campaigns in the European and Pacific theaters in the period 1939-1945. [Draw upon the data in historical maps]
  
• Analyzing the dimensions of Hitler's "Final Solution" and the Allies' response to the Holocaust. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Analyzing the Roosevelt administration's wartime diplomacy. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
• Analyzing President Truman's decision to employ nuclear weapons against Japan and evaluating the moral and political implications of that decision. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Explaining the costs of the war for the Allies and the Axis powers. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Explaining the organization and functions of the United Nations. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of the effects of World War II at home by:

• Explaining economic and military mobilization during World War II. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Contrasting the contributions of United States minorities to the war effort with the racism and discrimination they faced. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Evaluating the internment of Japanese Americans during the war. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Analyzing the effects of World War II on gender roles and the American family. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, and behaviors]
  
• Evaluating the war's impact on United States culture and technology. [Draw upon visual and literary sources]
  
  

Although the study of the era following World War II can easily be dominated by a preoccupation with the Cold War, our understanding of present-day American society will be deficient without grappling with the remarkable changes in American society and culture in the 1950s and 1960s.

Students will need to understand how the postwar economic boom produced mighty changes in American education, in consumer culture, in suburbanization, in the return to domesticity for many women, in the character of corporate life, in technological explosion, and in sexual and cultural mores (both of which involved startling changes in dress, speech, music, film and television, family structure, uses of leisure time, and more). All of this can take on deeper meaning when connected to the advent of the civil rights and feminist movements that would become an essential part of the third great reform impulse in American history, from the 1950s forward.

The reinvigoration of New Deal liberalism and its gradual exhaustion in the 1970s is worth probing as a case study of government's responsibilities, entitlements, and the continuing quest for social and economic equality that still preoccupies the American people.

The swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States rightfully claims attention because it led to the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as the Berlin airlift, Cuban missile crisis, American interventions in many parts of the world, a huge investment in scientific research, and environmental damage that will take generations to rectify. The Vietnam War is especially noteworthy. It demonstrated the power of American public opinion in reversing foreign policy, it tested the democratic system to its limits, and it left scars on American society that have not yet been erased.

Students Should Understand: The economic boom and social transformation of postwar America.

1A Demonstrate understanding of the extent and impact of economic changes in the postwar period by:

• Analyzing the debate over demobilization and reconversion and its effects on the economy. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Explaining the reasons for the sustained growth of the postwar consumer economy. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the growth of the service, white collar, and professional sectors of the economy. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the impact of the Cold War on the economy. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Analyzing the gap between the "affluent society" and "the other America." [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of how the social changes of the postwar period affected various Americans by:

• Evaluating the effect of the GI Bill on American society. [Hypothesize the influence of the past on the present]
  
• Examining causes and results of new governmental spending on educational programs in the 1950s. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the expansion of suburbanization and analyzing the impact of the "crabgrass frontier." [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining the reasons for the "return to domesticity" and its effect on gender roles and family life. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Examining the place of religion in postwar American life. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Examining the influence of popular culture. [Draw upon visual sources]
  
• Analyzing the role of the mass media in homogenizing American culture and assessing its validity for the "other America." [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: The postwar extension of the New Deal.

2A Demonstrate understanding of the political debate over continuation of the New Deal by:

• Explaining the postwar reaction to the labor movement and the responses of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to labor's agenda. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Analyzing Truman's support for civil rights and the effect on the Democratic party. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Contrasting Truman's Fair Deal with Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism." [Compare and contrast different sets of ideas]
  
  

2B Demonstrate understanding of the New Frontier and Great Society and analyze the domestic accomplishments by:

• Analyzing Kennedy's commitment to liberalism and the reasons for his election in 1960. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Evaluating the domestic accomplishments of the New Frontier. [Hold interpretations of history as tentative]
  
• Analyzing Johnson's presidential leadership and evaluating the reforms of the Great Society. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Assessing the legacy of the New Frontier and Great Society. [Evaluate major debates among historians]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: The Cold War and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts in domestic and international politics.

3A Demonstrate understanding of the origins and domestic consequences of the Cold War by:

• Evaluating the "flawed peace" resulting from World War II and the effectiveness of the United Nations in reducing international tensions and conflicts. [Draw upon the data in historical maps]
  
• Explaining the origins of the Cold War and the advent of nuclear politics. [Hold interpretations of history as tentative]
  
• Explaining the relationship between the Cold War and the emergence of the internal security and loyalty programs under Truman and Eisenhower. [Analyze the cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the factors that led to the Korean conflict and analyzing the effects of the police action on U.S. foreign and domestic policy. [Identify relevant historical antecedents]
  
• Explaining the major Soviet Union-United States clashes and analyzing the implementation of the containment policy during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Explaining the rise of McCarthyism and evaluating its effects on civil liberties. [Analyze the cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the reasons for the demise of McCarthyism and explaining its overall significance and legacy. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

3B Demonstrate understanding of U.S. foreign policy in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America by:

• Contrasting and evaluating the responses of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to nationalism in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Evaluating and comparing the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' Latin American policy. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the Kennedy-Johnson policies toward the Soviet Union and the evolution from confrontation to coexistence. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Assessing the Kennedy-Johnson response to anticolonial movements in Africa. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

3C Demonstrate understanding of the foreign and domestic consequences of U.S. involvement in Vietnam by:

• Analyzing the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations' Vietnam policy and the consequences of escalation of the war. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Analyzing growing disillusionment with the war. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Assessing the impact of class and race on wartime mobilization. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Evaluating the effect of the war on Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Explaining the provisions of the Paris Peace Accord of 1973 and evaluating Nixon's accomplishment. [Differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations]
  
• Analyzing the constitutional issues involved in the war and the legacy of Vietnam. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
  

Students Should Understand: The struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties.

4A Demonstrate understanding of the Second "Reconstruction" and analyze its advancement of civil rights by:

• Explaining the postwar origins of the modern civil rights movement and the role of the NAACP in the legal assault on segregation. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Evaluating the Warren Court's reasoning in Brown vs. Board of Education and its significance in advancing civil rights. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the resistance to civil rights in the South between 1954 and 1965. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Analyzing the roles and ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in the civil rights movement and evaluating their legacies. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Assessing the role of the legislative and executive branches in advancing the civil rights movement. [Evaluate the implementation of a decision]
  
• Explaining the change from the focus on de jure segregation to the nationwide assault on de facto segregation. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

4B Demonstrate understanding of how Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans advanced the movement for civil rights and equal rights by:

• Evaluating the grievances, goals, and accomplishments of the various Asian American groups in advancing the movement for civil and equal rights. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
• Evaluating the strategies of various Mexican American leaders and groups in advancing the movement for civil and equal rights. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Evaluating the grievances, goals, and accomplishments of the American Indian Movement. [Evidence historical perspectives]
  
• Analyzing the reasons for the escalation from civil disobedience to "Brown Power" and "Red Power." [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
  

4C Demonstrate understanding of how women advanced the movement for civil rights and equal rights by:

• Analyzing the factors contributing to modern feminism and the emergence of the National Organization for Women (NOW). [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]
  
• Identifying the major issues affecting women and explaining the conflicts these issues engendered. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Evaluating the conflicting perspectives over the ERA, Title VII, and Roe v. Wade. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  
  

4D Demonstrate understanding of the contributions of the Warren Court in advancing civil liberties and equal rights by:

• Analyzing the expansion of due process rights in such cases as Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Evaluating criticism of the extension of due process rights for the accused. [Evaluate alternative courses of action]
  
• Explaining the court's reasoning in establishing the "one man, one vote" principle. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Evaluating the court's interpretation of freedom of religion. [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
  

The study of the last few decades of American history needs to be approached with a healthy dose of caution since it is too early to judge whether events and trends that seem epic at the time will later seem as important.

There can be little doubt, however, that in global politics the role of the United States has led to seismic changes that every student, as a person approaching voting age, should understand. The detente with the People's Republic of China under Nixon's presidency represents a beginning of a new era whose outcome is still far from determined. Nor can the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe be translated into any certain appearance of the "new world order" where the United States would have the leading role. But students can understand little about what is happening today without comprehending these momentous events.

Students should study carefully the ability of the political and constitutional system to check and balance itself against potential abuses as exemplified in the Watergate and Iran-Contra affairs. They can hone their ability to think carefully about the American political system, about government's role in the economy, and about how Americans have come to claim entitlements that would have been condemned as socialism half a century ago by studying the "new conservatism" of the Reagan-Bush era. This will alert them to the recurrent shifts in public mood and policy following major wars and domestic dislocation.

No course in American history can reach a conclusion without considering some of the major social and cultural changes of the most recent decades. Among them, a few may claim precedence: first, the reopening of the nation's gates to immigrants that for the first time come from Asia and Central America; second, renewed reform movements that struggle to carry out environmental, feminist, and civil rights agendas that lost steam in the 1970s; third, the resurgence of religious evangelicalism; and last, the massive alteration in the character of work through technological innovation and corporate reorganization.

Students Should Understand: Recent developments in foreign and domestic policies.

1A Demonstrate understanding of Nixon’s domestic agenda and the Watergate Affair by:

• Explaining the administration's "southern strategy" and evaluating its political significance. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Analyzing the ways in which Nixon initiated and changed social and environmental programs. [Assess the importance of the individual in history]
  
• Assessing government policy for dealing with the twin problems of recession and inflation. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Explaining the Nixon administration's involvement in Watergate and examining the role of the media in exposing the scandal. [Formulate historical questions]
  
• Analyzing the constitutional issues raised by the Watergate affair and evaluating the effects of Watergate on public opinion. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
  

1B Demonstrate understanding of domestic policy issues in contemporary American society by:

• Analyzing the Ford and Carter responses to "the imperial presidency." [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Evaluating the Republican and Democratic administrations' attempts to deal with the economic "stagflation." [Formulate a position or course of action on an issue]
  
• Explaining the conservative reaction to liberalism and evaluating supply-side economic strategies of the Reagan and Bush administrations. [Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas]
  
• Examining the impact of the "Reagan Revolution" on federalism and public perceptions of the role of government. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Analyzing the constitutional issues in the Iran-Contra affair. [Identify issues and problems in the past]
  
• Analyzing why labor unionism declined in the Reagan-Bush era. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Evaluating the impact of the recession and the growing national debt on the Bush and Clinton administrations' domestic agendas. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

1C Demonstrate understanding of major foreign policy initiatives by:

• Assessing U.S. policies toward arms limitation and improved relations with the Soviet Union. [Examine the influence of ideas]
  
• Explaining Nixon's detente with the People's Republic of China and how it reshaped U.S. foreign policy. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Examining the interconnections between the United States' role as a superpower with the evolving political struggles in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining Reagan's efforts to reassert U.S. military power and rebuild American prestige. [Hypothesize the influence of the past]
  
• Evaluating the reasons for the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the USSR. [Analyze multiple causation]
  
• Evaluating the reformulation of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  
  

Students Should Understand: Major social and economic developments in contemporary America.

2A Demonstrate understanding of continuing reform agendas by:

Explaining the arguments for and against affirmative action and evaluating its effects on the social and economic position of women and minorities. [Consider multiple perspectives]

Examining the changing goals of the women's movement and analyzing the issues currently dividing women. [Explain historical continuity and change]

Explaining the evolution of government support for the rights of the physically and emotionally challenged. [Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration]

Evaluating the grievances of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans and the steps they have taken to rectify past injustices. [Explain historical continuity and change]

Examining the emergence of the Gay Liberation movement and analyzing the arguments concerning the civil rights of gay Americans. [Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances]

Evaluating how diverse peoples and their cultures have shaped American life. [Consider multiple perspectives]

2B Demonstrate understanding of the new immigration and internal migration by:

• Exploring the reasons for the internal migrations from the "Rustbelt" to the "Sunbelt" and analyzing its impact on politics. [Utilize visual and mathematical data]
  
• Explaining the factors that prompted the new immigration. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Examining how the new immigration has raised issues concerning intergroup relations and governmental responsibilities. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
  

2C Demonstrate understanding of changing religious diversity and its impact on American institutions and values by:

• Analyzing how changing immigration patterns have affected religious diversity. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing the position of major religious groups on political and social issues. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the growth of religious fundamentalism and the appeal of television evangelists. [Consider multiple perspectives]
  

2D Demonstrate understanding of the modern American economy by:

• Evaluating the importance of scientific and technological change on the workplace and productivity. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Analyzing the changing composition of the American work force. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Assessing the impact of trade and overseas competition on the economy. [Interrogate historical data]
  
  

2E Demonstrate understanding of contemporary American culture by:

• Analyzing how social change has affected artistic expression. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]
  
• Explaining the influence of media on contemporary American culture. [Explain historical continuity and change]
  
• Examining the effects of ethnic diversity on popular culture. [Interrogate historical data]
  
• Examining the increased commercialization of professional sports and popular culture. [Analyze cause-and-effect relationships]