Lesson Plans

The American Nation: A History of the United States ©2000

by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes

Focus Lesson 5

Chapter 7: "National Growing Pains"
Chapter 8: "Toward a National Economy"

AP* Course Description

• The Age of Jefferson, 1800–1816
  • Madison
  • War of 1812
    • Causes
    • Invasion of Canada
    • Hartford Convention
    • Conduct of the war
    • Treaty of Ghent
    • New Orleans
• Nationalism and Economic Expansion
  • James Monroe: Era of Good Feelings and the Monroe Doctrine
  • Panic of 1819
  • Settlement of the West
  • Missouri Compromise
  • Foreign affairs: The Monroe Doctrine
  • Election of 1824: End of the Virginia dynasty
  • Economic revolution
    • Early railroads and canals
    • Expansion of business
      – Beginnings of the factory system
    • The cotton revolution in the South
    • Commercial agriculture

Key Components

• Instructor's Manual:
  Chapter 7, pp. 63–74
  Chapter 8, pp. 75–83
• Study Guide, Vol. I:
  Chapter 7, pp. 100–119
  Chapter 8, pp. 120–133
• Test Bank:
  Chapter 7, pp. 107–123
  Chapter 8, pp. 124–141

Key Web Sites

• War of 1812–1814
• Cotton, Inc.
• U.S. Route 40: America's Golden Highway

Key Words and Terms

Suggested Pacing

Test Strategy

Key Concepts

• The War of 1812
  Students should be referred back to Washington's Farewell Address and his view of the danger of foreign entanglements to the stability of the new nation. Point out, however, that the War of 1812 once and for all established the United States as a nation among nations. By fighting the greatest military power in the world to a draw, the new nation ensured its sovereignty—even though it would have had to rely on that same military power should any European nation have tried to establish dominion in the Americas after the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine.
  
  
• States' rights, slavery, and expansion
  These three themes—states' rights, slavery, and expansion—will continue as themes throughout much of the nineteenth century. Students should begin to track these themes in table form, noting the event, issue, or situation; its resolution; major actors; and legacy. Students should be able to answer the question of whether the solution solved the problem or simply left the problem to another time to attempt to solve. For the most part, they will find that no solution truly solved any issue related to states' rights and the extension of slavery, but only put it off or created a new problem for someone else to solve.
  
  

Summing Up Student Understanding

1. To help students synthesize what they have been reading, divide the class into groups of four or five students for a discussion session. Have half the groups discuss the development of the Southern economy and the other half discuss the development of the Northern economy. After about 10 minutes, stop the conversations and ask students as a whole group to list the topics they have been talking about. Write the items on the board in the order in which they have been volunteered. When the suggestions have been exhausted, ask students to classify the items as economic, political, and/or social or societal.
   
   Discuss the social and political implications of the two predominant economic systems: slavery and the factory system. Point out that while only 50,000 large plantations—those with from 20 to 200 enslaved African Americans—existed, this is the predominant image of the South that existed in the nineteenth century and continues to exist.
   
   
2. Encourage students to use the information from the board to create a table to compare and contrast the economies, political philosophies, and social structures of the regions. The table will help students organize the sectional divisions that underlay national politics in the first half of the nineteenth century in a convenient format for review purposes.
   
   

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• American Issues: Vol. I to 1877, edited by Unger and Tomes—Chapters 8 and 9
• The Power of Words: Vol. I to 1877, edited by Breen—Chapter 10
• Constructing the American Past, Vol. I, edited by Gorn, Roberts, and Bilhartz—Chapter 8