Primary documents prompt reflection on history. Landen Schmeichel sees this often when using documents in his Advanced Placement US History course at Legacy High School in Bismarck, North Dakota. During a unit on the Progressive movement, he asked students to read an excerpt of Justice David Brewer’s 1908 ruling in Muller v. Oregon. It upheld an Oregon State law prohibiting women from working more than 10 hours in a day. After they read the excerpt, Schmeichel showed students a textbook summary of the ruling that called it a win for women. But in the opinion, Brandeis referred to women as a cl ..read more

Discussion of primary documents. A supportive and engaged group of educators. Historic locations. Free professional development. What more could you ask for? Applications open soon for our Fall 2024 Multi Day seminars! We are hosting seminars on a variety of topics in American history and politics. The application will be open April 8-April 30. Some of our topics include: The Underground Railroad at The Underground Railroad Heritage Center in Niagara Falls, NY West Coast Immigration at the Angel Island Immigration Station on Angel Island, CA Contested Elections: 1800, 1824, 1874, 1960 &a ..read more

Thomas Jefferson is most famous for eloquently articulating three natural rights that belong to “all men”—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But Jefferson held that humans had more than just those three rights; in 1803, he was particularly worried about “the natural right we have always insisted on with Spain; to wit that of a nation holding the upper part of streams, having a right of innocent passage thro’ them to the ocean” (Jefferson to Breckinridge, August 12, 1803). The Mississippi River was the stream to which Jefferson referred: stretching more than 2,300 miles, the Miss ..read more

Teaching American History’s Documents and Debates volumes presents American history as a series of topics.  For each topic, a selection of documents recreates a debate over a particular issue that highlights one of the enduring themes of American life: balancing freedom, equality, liberty and order; the struggle of groups for full inclusion in American life; the role of the government in overseeing the economic life of American citizens; and the ongoing argument over the role America should play in world affairs.  Below is a sampling of topics from Documents & Debates, v.2. Each ..read more

As Publications Manager at Teaching American History, I frequently hear the following from our teacher partners: I love teaching with primary sources!  But which one should I use? Your website is great!  But I feel overwhelmed when I look all the documents. My district has dropped our textbook and we are switching to primary sources.  Where do I even start? I can’t expect a high school student to read an entire Federalist Paper!?  Document collection page featuring document thumbnails and dropdown menu with a thematic table of contents, introduction ..read more

Amanda Bryan excepted today’s blog from our Core Documents volume, Political Parties, edited by Eric Sands.  Download the volume in our bookstore today. Political parties have a long and often convoluted history in American politics. . . . To the Founders, parties were factions that threatened to divide the nation into competing groups that, at the worst, could turn to violence to advance their interests. The Founders also feared that parties would disrupt the separation of powers. This would be especially true in the case of unified government where loyalty to party might come ..read more

On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most important and effective speeches of his political career. His speech at Cooper Union was a rhetorical masterpiece and helped make him the Republican candidate for president. Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 allowed him to reach a national audience. In those debates, Lincoln argued that Douglas’s doctrine of popular sovereignty—that the people of the territories could decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery—meant an indifference to the spread of slavery. Worse, it was a betrayal of America’s principles. Rather ..read more

Teaching American History provides various free resources for American history and government teachers, including our popular seminars, multi-day seminars, and extensive database of original source documents. Still, to paraphrase a famous campaign slogan from the 1990s, for TAH, it’s the documents, stupid! Seriously, that’s because we believe the best way to learn about American history and government is by bringing the words of those who lived it into the classroom. Most teachers discover our database when searching for a specific document. When our site pops up in th ..read more

A Conversation with Sonja Czarnecki Sonja Czarnecki, 2022 MAHG Graduate “In order to understand history, you have to do history,” Sonja Czarnecki insists. “You need to see how historical narratives are made.” To give students insight into the work of historians, Czarnecki assigns research projects in all of the courses she teaches at Bishop Seabury Academy in Lawrence, Kansas. She also pursues her own research. In October, Czarnecki’s article “Migrant Music” was published in The Chronicles of Oklahoma. Czarnecki, a 2022 graduate of the Master of Arts in American History and ..read more

U.S. Marines with Company G, 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, direct a concentration of fire at the enemy during Operation Allen Brook, 8 May 1968. www.tecom.usmc.mil. Colored version available from: Wikimedia Commons, By the end of 1967, almost 20,000 Americans had died in Vietnam and the total number of American troops had increased to over 500,000, but progress in the war was hard to see. The November 11, 1967 issue of the New York Times reported on a Gallup poll that found 59 percent of Americans in favor of continuing the war in Vietnam. Of those who wanted to continue the war ..read more