US History A
Course Description
An economic, political and cultural survey of the United States from the nation's beginnings in 1607 to the Market Crash of 1929.
US History A – Parts 1 & 2.
Unit 1 - American Beginnings to 1877
Chapter 1. Beginnings to 1763 / Read pp 21 to 43
Talking Points: section 3. Early British Colonies
Famous Faces: Benjamin Franklin, John Smith, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Penn, William Pitt, George II, Jonathan Edwards.
Word Wall: joint-stock company; House of Burgesses; Mayflower Compact; Bacon’s Rebellion;
Puritans; Pilgrims; colonial assembly; mercantilism; Parliament; triangular trade; middle passage; Enlightenment; Great Awakening; social contract; French/ Indian War.
Chapter 2. Revolution & the Early Republic / Read pp 44 to79
Talking Points: section 3. Confederation and the Constitution
Famous Faces: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson; Daniel Shay; James Madison; Alexander
Hamilton
Word Wall: First Continental Congress; Second Continental Congress; Articles of Confederation; Land Ordinance of 1785; Northwest Ordinance of 1787; Great Compromise; Three-Fifths Compromise; checks and balances; federalism; ratification; protective tariff; nullification.
Chapter 2. The Living Constitution / Read pp 82 to 105
Chapter 3. Growth of a Young Nation / Read pp 110 to 153
Talking Points: section 3. Manifest Destiny
Famous Faces: John Marshall; Eli Whitney; Andrew Jackson
Word Wall: judicial review; Marbury v. Madison; Monroe Doctrine; cotton gin; Manifest Destiny; Forty-Niners; Transportation Revolution; Erie Canal; Market Revolution; Sam Slater; Lowell Textile mills; Seneca Falls convention.
Chapter 4. The Union In Peril / Read pp 154 to 197
Talking Points: section 4. Reconstruction and Its Effects
Famous Faces: Abraham Lincoln; Jefferson Davis;
Word Wall: secession; popular sovereignty; Republican Party; Civil War; Confederacy; Gettysburg Address: Civil War Amendments; Reconstruction; sharecropping.
Chapter 5. Changes on the Western Frontier / Read pp 219 to 225
Talking Points: section 3. Farmers and the Populist Movement
Famous Faces: William Jennings Bryan; William McKinley.
Word Wall: greenbacks; gold standard; bi-metallism; Populism; “Cross of Gold” speech.
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain; 2. The Unvanquished – William Faulkner
3. O Pioneers – Willa Cather ; 4. The Trees – Conrad Richter
Unit 2 - Bridge to the Twentieth Century
Chapter 6. Industrialism In America / Read pp 228 to 249
Talking Points: section 3. Big Business and Labor
Famous Faces: Thomas Edison; Andrew Carnegie; Charles Darwin; John D Rockefeller; Eugene Debs;
Word Wall: Bessemer process; horizontal integration; Granger laws; Interstate Commerce Act; Social Darwinism; robber barons; Sherman Anti-Trust Act; American Federation of Labor; Homestead Strike; Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Chapter 7 Urbanization and Politics / Read pp 252 to 271
Talking Points: section 3. Politics in the Gilded Age.
Famous Faces: Jane Addams; William “Boss” Tweed.
Word Wall: Ellis Island; melting pot; nativism; Chinese Exclusion Act; urbanization;
Americanization movement; tenements; Social Gospel movement; settlement houses; Gilded Age; political machines; graft; political boss; Tweed Ring; Pendleton Act of 1883.
Chapter 8 Culture / Read pp 274 to 299
Talking Points: section 4. The Dawn of Mass Culture
Famous Faces: Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted; Orville & Wilbur Wright; Booker T. Washington; W.E. B. DuBois; Joseph Pulitzer; William Randolph Hearst.
Word Wall: Ellis Island; poll tax, Jim Crow laws, Plessy v Ferguson; department store.
- - DEPARTMENTAL MIDTERM EXAM 25 POINTS - -
Chapter 9 Progressivism / Read pp 304 to 337
Talking Points: section 3. Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal
Famous Faces: Robert M. LaFollette; Susan B. Anthony; Upton Sinclair; Teddy Roosevelt; William
Taft; Gifford Pinchot; Woodrow Wilson; Frank Lloyd Wright.
Word Wall: Progressivism; muckrakers; scientific management; initiative (on the ballot), referendum (a vote on an initiative), recall (of a public official); direct primary (voters choose
candidates for public office); suffrage; The Jungle; modern presidency; trust (a company created solely to control the stock of other companies); the Square Deal; Hepburn Act of 1906; Pure Food and Drug Act; conservation (limited use); preservation (non-use);
NAACP (1909); Payne-Aldrich Tariff; Bull Moose Party; New Freedom; Clayton Anti- Trust Act of 1914; federal income tax; Federal Reserve; 19th Amendment.
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1. The Octopus – Frank Norris; 2. An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser; 3. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn – Betty Smith; 3. Ragtime – E. L. Doctorow
Unit 3 - Modern America Emerges
Chapter 10. America Claims an Empire / Read pp 340 to 370
Talking Points: section 2. The Spanish American War
Famous Faces: Alfred T. Mahan; George Dewey; John Hay
Word Wall: Imperialism (Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Columbia, Panama,
Mexico); yellow journalism; De Lome letter; U.S.S. Maine; San Juan Hill; Rough
Riders; Platt Amendment; protectorate; colonial entanglements (p 355); Philippine
-American War; Open Door policy; Boxer Rebellion; Panama Canal (1904-1914);
Roosevelt Corollary; Dollar Diplomacy (use of financial power as a diplomatic weapon);
Chapter 11. The First World War / Read pp 370 to 407
Talking Points: section 4. Wilson Fights For Peace
Famous Faces: Archduke Franz Ferdinand; John J. Pershing; William Trotter (p 393); Georges
Clemenceau; David Lloyd George; Henry Cabot Lodge
Word Wall: Triple Entente; Triple Alliance; Central Powers, Allies; Ottoman Empire; “powder keg of
Europe;” Sarajevo; Balkans; Yugoslavia; no-man’s land; trench warfare; U-boat;
Lusitania; Selective Service Act; convoy system; armistice; War Industries Board;
victory gardens; propaganda; Great Migration; Fourteen Points; League of Nations;
“Big Four;” Treaty of Versailles; reparations; war-guilt clause.
Unit 4 – The Great Depression
Chapter 12. The Roaring Twenties / Read pp 410 to 431
Talking Points: section 3. The Business of America
Famous Faces: A. Mitchell Palmer; John L. Lewis; Calvin Coolidge; Herbert Hoover;
Word Wall: Communism; isolationism, anarchists; quota system; coal miners’ strike; labor
movement; urban sprawl; installment plan; superficial prosperity.
Chapter 13. The Jazz Age / Read pp 432 to 461
Talking Points: section 4. The Harlem Renaissance
Famous Faces: Al Capone; Aimee Semple MacPherson; Clarence Darrow; John Scopes; Babe Ruth;
Charles Lindbergh; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway, George Gershwin; Zora
Neale Hurston; Marcus Garvey; Langston Hughes; Louis Armstrong; Duke Ellington.
Word Wall: Prohibition; speakeasies; bootleggers; Scopes Trial; fundamentalism; flappers; the
Charleston; “Rhapsody in Blue;” Harlem Renaissance; Jazz Age
- - DEPARTMENTAL FINAL EXAM 50 POINTS - -
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1.) Tom Sawyer – Samuel Clemens
2.) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They – Horace McCoy
3.) The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West
4.) The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
5.) The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Connor
6.) Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
US History A – Parts 1 & 2.
Unit 1 - American Beginnings to 1877
Chapter 1. Beginnings to 1763 / Read pp 21 to 43
Talking Points: section 3. Early British Colonies
Famous Faces: Benjamin Franklin, John Smith, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Penn, William Pitt, George II, Jonathan Edwards.
Word Wall: joint-stock company; House of Burgesses; Mayflower Compact; Bacon’s Rebellion;
Puritans; Pilgrims; colonial assembly; mercantilism; Parliament; triangular trade; middle passage; Enlightenment; Great Awakening; social contract; French/ Indian War.
Chapter 2. Revolution & the Early Republic / Read pp 44 to79
Talking Points: section 3. Confederation and the Constitution
Famous Faces: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson; Daniel Shay; James Madison; Alexander
Hamilton
Word Wall: First Continental Congress; Second Continental Congress; Articles of Confederation; Land Ordinance of 1785; Northwest Ordinance of 1787; Great Compromise; Three-Fifths Compromise; checks and balances; federalism; ratification; protective tariff; nullification.
Chapter 2. The Living Constitution / Read pp 82 to 105
Chapter 3. Growth of a Young Nation / Read pp 110 to 153
Talking Points: section 3. Manifest Destiny
Famous Faces: John Marshall; Eli Whitney; Andrew Jackson
Word Wall: judicial review; Marbury v. Madison; Monroe Doctrine; cotton gin; Manifest Destiny; Forty-Niners; Transportation Revolution; Erie Canal; Market Revolution; Sam Slater; Lowell Textile mills; Seneca Falls convention.
Chapter 4. The Union In Peril / Read pp 154 to 197
Talking Points: section 4. Reconstruction and Its Effects
Famous Faces: Abraham Lincoln; Jefferson Davis;
Word Wall: secession; popular sovereignty; Republican Party; Civil War; Confederacy; Gettysburg Address: Civil War Amendments; Reconstruction; sharecropping.
Chapter 5. Changes on the Western Frontier / Read pp 219 to 225
Talking Points: section 3. Farmers and the Populist Movement
Famous Faces: William Jennings Bryan; William McKinley.
Word Wall: greenbacks; gold standard; bi-metallism; Populism; “Cross of Gold” speech.
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain; 2. The Unvanquished – William Faulkner
3. O Pioneers – Willa Cather ; 4. The Trees – Conrad Richter
Unit 2 - Bridge to the Twentieth Century
Chapter 6. Industrialism In America / Read pp 228 to 249
Talking Points: section 3. Big Business and Labor
Famous Faces: Thomas Edison; Andrew Carnegie; Charles Darwin; John D Rockefeller; Eugene Debs;
Word Wall: Bessemer process; horizontal integration; Granger laws; Interstate Commerce Act; Social Darwinism; robber barons; Sherman Anti-Trust Act; American Federation of Labor; Homestead Strike; Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
Chapter 7 Urbanization and Politics / Read pp 252 to 271
Talking Points: section 3. Politics in the Gilded Age.
Famous Faces: Jane Addams; William “Boss” Tweed.
Word Wall: Ellis Island; melting pot; nativism; Chinese Exclusion Act; urbanization;
Americanization movement; tenements; Social Gospel movement; settlement houses; Gilded Age; political machines; graft; political boss; Tweed Ring; Pendleton Act of 1883.
Chapter 8 Culture / Read pp 274 to 299
Talking Points: section 4. The Dawn of Mass Culture
Famous Faces: Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted; Orville & Wilbur Wright; Booker T. Washington; W.E. B. DuBois; Joseph Pulitzer; William Randolph Hearst.
Word Wall: Ellis Island; poll tax, Jim Crow laws, Plessy v Ferguson; department store.
- - DEPARTMENTAL MIDTERM EXAM 25 POINTS - -
Chapter 9 Progressivism / Read pp 304 to 337
Talking Points: section 3. Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal
Famous Faces: Robert M. LaFollette; Susan B. Anthony; Upton Sinclair; Teddy Roosevelt; William
Taft; Gifford Pinchot; Woodrow Wilson; Frank Lloyd Wright.
Word Wall: Progressivism; muckrakers; scientific management; initiative (on the ballot), referendum (a vote on an initiative), recall (of a public official); direct primary (voters choose
candidates for public office); suffrage; The Jungle; modern presidency; trust (a company created solely to control the stock of other companies); the Square Deal; Hepburn Act of 1906; Pure Food and Drug Act; conservation (limited use); preservation (non-use);
NAACP (1909); Payne-Aldrich Tariff; Bull Moose Party; New Freedom; Clayton Anti- Trust Act of 1914; federal income tax; Federal Reserve; 19th Amendment.
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1. The Octopus – Frank Norris; 2. An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser; 3. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn – Betty Smith; 3. Ragtime – E. L. Doctorow
Unit 3 - Modern America Emerges
Chapter 10. America Claims an Empire / Read pp 340 to 370
Talking Points: section 2. The Spanish American War
Famous Faces: Alfred T. Mahan; George Dewey; John Hay
Word Wall: Imperialism (Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Columbia, Panama,
Mexico); yellow journalism; De Lome letter; U.S.S. Maine; San Juan Hill; Rough
Riders; Platt Amendment; protectorate; colonial entanglements (p 355); Philippine
-American War; Open Door policy; Boxer Rebellion; Panama Canal (1904-1914);
Roosevelt Corollary; Dollar Diplomacy (use of financial power as a diplomatic weapon);
Chapter 11. The First World War / Read pp 370 to 407
Talking Points: section 4. Wilson Fights For Peace
Famous Faces: Archduke Franz Ferdinand; John J. Pershing; William Trotter (p 393); Georges
Clemenceau; David Lloyd George; Henry Cabot Lodge
Word Wall: Triple Entente; Triple Alliance; Central Powers, Allies; Ottoman Empire; “powder keg of
Europe;” Sarajevo; Balkans; Yugoslavia; no-man’s land; trench warfare; U-boat;
Lusitania; Selective Service Act; convoy system; armistice; War Industries Board;
victory gardens; propaganda; Great Migration; Fourteen Points; League of Nations;
“Big Four;” Treaty of Versailles; reparations; war-guilt clause.
Unit 4 – The Great Depression
Chapter 12. The Roaring Twenties / Read pp 410 to 431
Talking Points: section 3. The Business of America
Famous Faces: A. Mitchell Palmer; John L. Lewis; Calvin Coolidge; Herbert Hoover;
Word Wall: Communism; isolationism, anarchists; quota system; coal miners’ strike; labor
movement; urban sprawl; installment plan; superficial prosperity.
Chapter 13. The Jazz Age / Read pp 432 to 461
Talking Points: section 4. The Harlem Renaissance
Famous Faces: Al Capone; Aimee Semple MacPherson; Clarence Darrow; John Scopes; Babe Ruth;
Charles Lindbergh; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway, George Gershwin; Zora
Neale Hurston; Marcus Garvey; Langston Hughes; Louis Armstrong; Duke Ellington.
Word Wall: Prohibition; speakeasies; bootleggers; Scopes Trial; fundamentalism; flappers; the
Charleston; “Rhapsody in Blue;” Harlem Renaissance; Jazz Age
- - DEPARTMENTAL FINAL EXAM 50 POINTS - -
Extra Credit: read one of the following novels. Then write a short essay connecting the book’s themes with those of your textbook. Proofread and spell check your draft.
1.) Tom Sawyer – Samuel Clemens
2.) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They – Horace McCoy
3.) The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West
4.) The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
5.) The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Connor
6.) Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
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