Don't know much about History: Study Questions

1) Discuss the significance of Thomas Jefferson's quote: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing...God forbid that we should ever be twenty year without such a rebellion...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
He is saying that a rebellion every now and then is a good thing because it reminds them that everything is not always peaceful and that they need to be reminded of how everyone is free to do as they will, but freedom is to an extent, and that there is sometimes a price to pay. It’s also ironic because he is one of the main people in the government and he is saying it is okay for people to rebel against the government.

2) Why did Shay's Rebellion happen?
It happened because the economy was going downhill, many farmers were seized to pay off debt-Their land was getting taxed, and the veterans were still awaiting their “bonuses”. When the police looked to the militia to help defend the debt courts against angry crowds, they sided with the farmers.

3) The constitution is "a political creation, hammered together in a series of artfully negotiated compromises. Discuss these compromises. Balancing political idealism with political expediency; between small and large states, north and south; slave states; and abolitionist states. Congress couldn’t take action to control slavery for twenty years; slaves would be counted as 3/5 person; they could later amend the constitution. Slaves, How presidents are elected, how everyone is represented in congress.

4) What was the Virginia Plan?
To have a two-chamber legislature; an executive chosen by legislature; and a judiciary also named by the legislature.

5) "No person held in service" was a euphemism for what?
Slaves

6) List the basic Powers and Checks of the three branches of the government.
See Packet.

7) Who wrote the Federalist Papers and why did they write them?
Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay—they were trying to influence the ratification debate.

8) Briefly outline the first ten amendments.
1) Seperation of Church and State; Freedom of speech and press
2) The right to bear arms and form militia
3) Soldiers couldn’t be housed in a private home without permission of the home owner.
4) Right to be free from “unreasonable search and seizure”
5) Provides for laws concerning prosecution, including the requirement of a grand-jury indictment and the protection from testifying against oneself.
6) Discusses trial by jury; Speedy Trial where crime has been committed.
7) Civil trial by Jury.
8) Prohibits Cruel and unusual punishment.
9) Defines the rule of the construction of the constitution.
10) Guarantees that any powers not specifically delegated to the federal government of denied to the states in the constitution rest with the states of the people.

9) Who could vote in the first election (what parts of the population)?
White adult land owning Males
10) How did Washington D.C. come be located on the banks of the Potomac? It was an agreement because they wanted it to be closest to Virginia because it was the biggest state. It was an agreement between Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton at a private dinner.
11) What did Jay's Treaty do? A treaty to avoid war with the British

12) What was the "Whiskey Rebellion" and how was it put down?
It was a rebellion in response to harsh whisky tax, led by George Washington. It was put down because they had no people and it was pathetic.

13) Describe the election of 1800? How was it finally resolved?
It was supposed to be between Jefferson and Atoms, then it becomes a tie between Jefferson and Burr, who are of the same party. Hamilton eventually convinces the House, who were mainly federalists, to vote for Jefferson.

14) Who was John Marshall?
Chief Justice, head judge, of the Supreme Court, and made it what it is today.

15) Why did France sell its North America possessions (the Louisiana territory) to the U.S.? They didn’t have the resources to fight off the Americans because they were fighting in Europe and all over the world. Napolean depended on Haiti to regain land, but they lost it.

16) What did Lewis and Clark do? Describe their journey?
They left from St. Louis and moved west in search for western expantion under direction from Jefferson. It took them three years. They mapped the area.

17) How did Hamilton incur the wrath of Aaron Burr? Was he right in what he did? How did the ordeal end? He argued that Jefferson should win the election. Yes I think he was right because he was on Jefferson’s side. It ended in a duel between Hamilton and Burr, and Hamilton died.

18) What was Jefferson's Embargo Act? Why was it unpopular and what was it suppose to do? It was a law restricting American ships from engaging in foreign trade. It was unpopular because a lot of trade was done with Britain and other major powers, so it lowered the American economy and made it so a large part of their trade was shut down.

19) What did Tecumseh try and do?
He tried to unite all the Natives along the coast to fight along the white people.

20) Describe the Battle of Tippecanoe?
It was between U.S. forces and Indian confederation. It was because the Indians kept saying they would fight the Americans if they didn’t back off, so the Americans attacked first. Americans won, but had a lot of casualties.

21) Most historians call the War of 1812 a draw. Why?
When people win, it’s decided by the treaty. In this treaty nothing happened, and everything was left as it was before the war.
22) Describe the Battle of New Orleans.
Last major battle of the war. They didn’t know that the war was over, so they kept fighting.

23) What did the Monroe Doctrine state?
Americas were no longer open to European colonization and that America would be the only power in the west.

24) What was the Missouri Compromise?
It said that no states north of Missouri could own slaves. Only the south states including Missouri could own slaves.

25) How was the election of 1824 decided? Why was it called a "corrupt bargain"? It was decided in the house of representatives. It was the only election since the passing of the 12 amendement that was decided this way because there was no majority in the electoral college.

26) List some of the labels attached to Andrew Jackson.
Murderer, slave owner, adulterer, orphan, frontiersman, horse racing man, Indian-fighter, war hero, land speculator.

27) Was Andrew Jackson an Indian hater? What did the natives call him? What "Indian Wars" did he fight in and what was the outcome? What was his native "policy" as President? Andrew Jackson was not an Indian hater, he just wanted land, and the Indians had it. He wasn't the biggest fan of their people, but racism wasn't his driving motivation. He was called 'long knife'. He fought in the Creek War and the white people won that won, removing the Creek from half of their lands. He fought against the Seminoles, which he also won, and Florida's land was sold cheap. He also fought in the war of 1812, which is now considered a draw. His 'policy' as president was to tell the Natives either assimilate, leave, or get killed.

28) How did Jackson come to symbolize the common people?
He worked his way up from being very poor to being extremely rich and in a position of power.

Constitution: Study Questions

1) What are the three branches of government and what are the powers of each?
Legislative Branch- Lawmaking branch. Congress is made up of the House of Representatives and Senate. The representatives are determined by the size of the state, and each state gets two senators. Power of the Congress include: collecting taxes, coining money, regulating trade, declare war and “raise and support armies”.
Executive Branch- Headed by President to carry out nation’s laws and policies. He is the commander in chief of armed forces and conducts relations with foreign countries. Elected by electoral college which is a combined number of votes for each state by their number of Representatives and Senators in for each state.
Judicial Branch- Court System. Supreme Court and Federal Courts hear cases involving the Constitution, laws passed by congress, and disputes between states.

2) How can these branches check and balance each other?
Both the House and the Senate must pass a bill for it to become a law. The president can check Congress by rejecting the bill. However, Congress can then check the president by overriding the veto. To override a veto, two-thirds of the members of both houses of Congress must vote for the bill.

3) What were the compromises to the constitution?
Two house legeslature, Each enslaved person was to be counted as 3/5 of a free person for both taxation and representation, slave trade couldn’t be interfered with until 1808, And that there be a bill of rights, which was defeated.

4) Who wrote the Federalist papers?
Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay.

5) What was the Bill of Rights? Why did some states demand its inclusion before they ratified the constitution?
It was a bill that protected people’s individual rights. It was mainly the Antifederalists who wanted the Bill of rights and that was because they feared that the government would become too powerful and the people’s rights wouldn’t be as protected.

6) What were the anti-federalists main fears about the constitution?
That it would take away the liberties Americans had fought to win from Great Britain. Also that it would create a strong central government, ignoring the will of the states and the people, and favor the wealthy few over the common people.

Revolutionary war project

1) Went to same place as British marched to. He went to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

2) They lined up in rows. British marched into concord. The militia and minute men killed many British on the bridge. The Colonists would attack the British from the back; it was really a brawl. They marched for hours.

3) It legally created the government. Our belief in life liberty and the persuit of happiness and the constitution.

4) Four cities had over 10,000 people in it.

5) Vast untamed continent. There were only two and a half million people. The rivers were highways leading from the ocean inland, but obsticles if you wanted to move from fort to fort. There were lots of trees and forests. We might not recognize it now because there weren’t as many big buildings and cities and there were not as many people by a large gap.

6) James Otis was a Boston Lawyer. His writings inspired the founding fathers. Professional revolutionary man.

7) Samuel Adams was known for organizing a political group known as the sons of Liberty. Patriot leader. They were a mob, not noble idealists.

8) They were noble idealists. They were very cunning, and were willing to do whatever they had to, to get what they wanted.

9) 1/3 wanted liberty, 1/3 didn’t want liberty, and 1/3 didn’t care if there was liberty.

10) During the Boston Massacre, 5 men were killed by British Soldiers. The massacre began due to the tension between the civilians and the military men. The soldiers were in Boston to keep the civilians in order so they wouldn’t begin rebel against the Townshend acts. The people didn’t view them as order keepers, but they though they were more of a threat to their independence. The colonists were extremely fed up with getting taxed on everything that when the government put a tax on tea, they reached their breaking point. The colonists refused to pay taxes imposed by parliament, so parliament took off all the taxes except for the tax on tea. When the tea ships tried to land in Boston, they wouldn’t let them. One ship did land and the colonists invaded it dressed as Indians and dumped all the tea into the ocean. Both of these events led to the Revolutionary War because the Colonists had had enough of the Government and thought they weren’t being treated equally, and they wanted to break free from the government

Howard Zinn Chapter 5

The American militia was just getting formed, and those who first joined were the hallmarks of respectability or at least of full citizenship in their communities. The ones that were excluded from the militia were the: Indians, free Negroes, White servants, and free white men who had no stable home. They became desperate for more people, so they recruited the less respectable whites, and the military became a place of promise for the poor who might rise in rank, acquire some money, and change their social status. They tried to force a large number of reluctant people to associate themselves with the military, and by the end of the process they would believe in it. They lost the first battles of the war, which included: Bunker Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Harlem Heights, and the Deep South, and they won the following small battles: Trenton, Princeton, and a big battle at Saratoga New York. In Philadelphia there was an inflation in prices one month that rose 45%. There was a mass meeting, which called for price reductions and an investigation on Robert Morris who was accused of holding food from the Market.

The majority of white colonists who had a bit of land, or no property at all were still better off than slaves or indentured servants or Indians and could be happily forced into the government of the revolution. Rich men, linked together in factions and compacts by business and family connections, dominated the Continental Congress, which dominated the colonies through the war. The colonists didn’t like how the congress was running things, so there were many mutinies. Black slaves held twenty five percent of the population. George Washington had denied the requests of the slaves to become free by joining the army. However, Lord Dunmore promised freedom to Virginia slaves who joined his forces and this created consternation, and the fear of slave revolts grew.

The American Revolution is sometimes said to have been the reason for separation of church and state. Christianity had been imbedded into every aspect and institution of America’s life. After the revolution the number of independent farmers grew, but the class structure didn’t change. During the revolution, to mobilize soldiers, the tenants were promised Land. For the Native Americans, the revolutionary war meant getting pushed out of their homeland and getting killed if they refused to do so. After the French and Indian war, the British agreed to establish a line at the Appalachian Mountains, which would be the Indian Territory, and this was known as the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Slavery in the north began to decrease, but slavery in the south increased with the needs of rice and cotton pickers. The revolution made it so the blacks could begin making demands on the white society. Blacks wanted to be treated equal to whites.

General ideas of what was going to go in the constitution were talked about. The people began questioning and putting to the test the power of the judge and the government. There were many revolts of countrymen and some militiamen who were fighting for justice-shay’s rebellion. The government was a democracy and they found a huge problem in the division of society amongst the rich and poor. They decided to make the government a two-part deal, one side was the democrat-republican, and the other was the federalists. The constitution was comprised of slaveholding interests in the south and moneyed interests in the north. The Bill of rights was created and it was designed to build popular backing for the new government. There was the sedition act, which made it a crime to say or write false, scandalous and malicious against the government. The government put on the Whiskey Tax, which was a problem for small farmers because they grew grain that was converted to whiskey. The farmers took up arms and rebelled against the collection of this tax.

French and Indian war Questions

1) George Washington becomes allies with half-king, who wants revenge on the French. He leads the first attack on the French and gave the word to start firing on the French.

2) Half-King was the leader of a native group and he sided with the British to get revenge on the French. He was called half-king because he wasn’t the strongest ruler; the Iroquois still ruled over them.

3)He went and massacred the wounded French by scalping them because he wanted revenge against the French.

4)I think the war was the French and British’s fault because without them establishing colonies and settlements in north America, none of the wars, or removal of native groups would have happened if they never came over from Europe. I think the natives were doing what they had to do and were just trying to protect themselves by joining either the French or British.

Howard Zinn Chapter 3

70 years after Virginia was founded, the white frontiersmen who were joined by slaves and servants started Bacon’s rebellion. It was a rebellion threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown. The governor of Jamestown, William Berkeley, had two motives to stop the rebellion: one was to develop an Indian policy which would divide Indians in order to control them; and two was to teach the poor whites of Virginia that rebellion didn’t pay off. The servants who joined the rebellion were part of the poor underclass whites who came to North American colonies from European cities whose governments were anxious to be rid of them. An indenture was signed in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years. To make sure they didn’t runaway, they were held captive until the ship was ready to make sail. In 1619 the Virginia House of Burgesses was created. It was the first representative assembly in America and it provided and enforced contracts between the servants and masters. The servants could not have sexual relations with each other and the women were not allowed to get pregnant, and they couldn’t get married. Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. The masters were slightly scared of the servants because there were so many rebellions. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the Virginia legislature passed laws to punish the servants who rebelled. It was easier for them to just run away, so many did. Soon, free men had passports to show which proved that they were free men. One in every ten servants that were later set free were successful. John Locke is often considered as the philosophical father of the founding fathers and the American system. He wrote the fundamental constitution in the 1660s. He set up an aristocratic government. By the 1700s the colonies began to take off and double and triple in size. The number of poor and homeless people also began to grow. Rebellions of all professions started. People in Boston who were in debt wanted paper money to get them out of their debt and didn’t want men to be imprisoned for the military. Through this period England was fighting a series of wars, which meant higher taxes, unemployment, and poverty. There was a constant fear of the slaves, Indians, and poor whites taking over; particularly the poor whites and black slaves banning together. After Bacon’s Rebellions, poor white folks were given muskets, among other things, and the black slaves were given nothing, which started to really separate the blacks from the whites. As the whites separated into upper and lower class, there soon came a middle class of small planters, independent farmers, and city artisans. A fact long true about this country as clearly stated by Richard Hofstadter is: “It was a middle-class society governed for the most part by its upper-class. In order for it to work out, the upper class realized that they had to listen to the middle-class, and in doing so, hoping that they could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England without ending either slavery or inequality.

Mystic Massacre

Comprehension Questions:
3) So they can spread their own religion. They intended to take over with their religion.

4) Puritans believed that in order for you to own the land you had to have a settlement on it, but the Pequot tribe believed that you temporarily lived there. They both treated their women and men differently. The Puritans believed that the men should do all the work and the women do cooking and cleaning. The Pequot were opposite however. They believed that their women did most the work such as cropping, making the huts, cooking, cleaning, and the men mainly hunted. When it came to warfare, the Puritans believed in genocide and killing as a way of settling disputes. The Pequot's on the other hand didn't believe in warfare, but in talking and going to the spirits for help.

5) The Dutch were in the new world for trade, not land so there weren't as many disputes between them and the natives. They got along better than the British because the British had to fight the natives for the land.

12) It changed the united states because the power changed to European power, and since they were successful in the Mystic Massacre, they thought it was ok to perform genocide on the other tribes, potentially wiping them out completely.

Primary Source Exploration:
1) It's a community where they believe strongly in the thought of everyone being equal, a community as a whole, peace, and kindness. Also that they keep believing in god. I think this community could be possible if the Europeans weren't so corrupt.

2) That they should live like kings and be perfect and have everyone look up to them. He expected god to have his eyes on them.

3) No i think he was talking mainly about the European colonies. No, the Europeans did not follow his vision, they did the exact opposite and wiped out many tribes from existence.

Extended Activities:
• Treaty of Hartford:

• Treaty was created to settle Pequot war.

• Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut River Colony, and Mohegan and Narragansett were the tribes at the party. The Pequots weren’t even at the signing of the treaty.

• Surviving Pequot prisoners were divided between the tribes.

• 40% of the Pequots were divided among the tribes that attended the party, and 20% were sent to the tribes on Long island who supported the Narragansett tribe.

• Connecticut River (towns) got Pequot lands

• It outlawed Pequot language, name, and any survivors would be called Mohegans or Narragansett.


• No Pequot town/settlement would be allowed

Howard Zinn

I think Howard Zinn's viewpoint is interesting. It definitely opens up a different perspective on how people thought of Christopher Columbus, and I'm sure, about many other untold/untaught sides in the class rooms. I think it's important that he wrote this book so people can have an understanding on both the sides, and not the more "heroic" or "better sounding" side. Overall, I like learning History from the "underdogs" of the situation, and not just from the glee-ful side.