Course Content
Lesson Plans
The American Nation: A History of the United States ©2000
by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes
Focus Lesson 7
Chapter 10: "The Making of Middle-Class America"
Chapter 11: "A Democratic Culture"
AP* Course Description
- Creating an American Culture
- Cultural nationalism
- Education reform/professionalism
- Religion; revivalism
- Utopian experiments: Mormons, Oneida Community
- Transcendentalists
- National literature, art, architecture
- Reform crusades
- Feminism: roles of women in the nineteenth century
- Abolitionism
- Temperance
- Criminals and the insane
Key Components
- Instructor's Manual:
Chapter 10, pp. 95–108
Chapter 11, pp. 109–117 - Study Guide, Vol. I:
Chapter 10, pp. 148–163
Chapter 11, pp. 164–176 - Test Bank:
Chapter 10, pp. 159–175
Chapter 11, pp. 176–193
Key Web Sites
Given the changing nature of the Internet, you may wish to preview these sites. Check the Online Companion Web site for updated links to U.S. history sites.
Key Words and Terms
Chapter 10
- cult of true womanhood
- communitarianism
- temperance
- Democracy in America
- Female Missionary Society
- Washingtonians
- The Liberator
- Seneca Falls Convention
- Charles Grandison Finney
- Ann Lee
- Mormons
- Brigham Young
- Charles Fourier
- William Lloyd Garrison
- James G. Birney
- Sarah Grimke
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- benevolent empire
- polygamy
- abolitionism
- Second Great Awakening
- American Temperance Union
- Maine Law
- Liberty Party
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Rappites
- Shakers
- Joseph Smith
- Robert Owen
- Dorothea Dix
- Theodore Dwight Weld
- Frederick Douglass
- Angelina Grimke
- Susan B. Anthony
Chapter 11
- Romanticism
- common school
- The Last of the Mohicans
- "Civil Disobedience"
- The Scarlet Letter
- Leaves of Grass
- Washington Irving
- John Singleton Copley
- Gilbert Stuart
- Henry David Thoreau
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Walt Whitman
- William Gilmore Simms
- Currier and Ives
- William Beaumont
- Transcendentalism
- lyceum
- Walden
- "The Raven"
- Moby Dick
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Benjamin West
- Charles Willson Peale
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Herman Melville
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Hudson River School
- Horace Mann
Suggested Pacing
Allow one week to teach Chapters 10 and 11. Combining the two chapters provides an opportunity to teach social and cultural history along with the political events of the period between the 1820s and the 1850s.
Test Strategy
Students should be aware that they do not have to answer the essay questions in the order in which they appear on the test. They should quickly scan the questions and rank them by how well they think they know the answers. Then students should respond first to the questions they know best. By following this strategy, if time becomes an issue, the more hurried answer will be to the question that the students feels least prepared to address.
Key Concepts
- De Tocqueville
Democracy in America is one of the seminal works of observation about the early United States. The author, Alexis de Tocqueville, was fascinated by the equality he saw, and believing that Europe was moving beyond an aristocracy, considered the United States as the model for what European nations could become. However, he paid little attention to urbanization and industrialization, which were creating their own levels of class hierarchy in the United States, or to the poverty that was often the end result of these two movements. - Abolition
Students should begin to track the work of abolitionists, the splits in the movement, and the increasing political controversy in the nation over slavery. Students should be aware of how abolitionists both fueled the controversy by their actions and words and garnered support because of the actions of their adversaries. - National identity
The description in Chapter 11 of the development of a new national identity in American arts and letters after the turn of the nineteenth century is not one that students should glide over. The AP* course description includes national literature, art, architecture, and the Transcendentalists. Students should know that James Fenimore Cooper was the first to use purely American elements in his literature, thereby creating the beginnings of an American cultural identity. The Romantic Movement spread to the United States and influenced a group of writers who became known as the Transcendentalists. The major writers among the Transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. If possible, students should read some of Emerson's and Thoreau's works for a sense of the movement's philosophy. Students should know where the other writers, such as Hawthorne and Melville, fit into the literary movements of the early to mid-1800s.
Summing Up Student Understanding
As noted in Focus Lesson 2, being able to analyze causes and their effects is an important skill in understanding U.S. history. Use a graphic organizer to have students determine the effects of the following causes. Write each cause in a large circle and draw lines outward from it. Draw smaller circles at the end of each line and have students write one effect in each of the smaller circles. Some causes are listed below. See pp. 160–162 of the Study Guide for additional ideas.
- factory system
- growth of industry
- Second Great Awakening
- abolitionist movement
- universal education
- development of a national cultural identity
- Transcendentalism
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
You might also find these additional readings useful in developing students' background knowledge or for DBQ activities:
- American Issues: Vol. I to 1877, edited by Unger and Tomes—Chapters 11 and 12
- The Power of Words: Vol. I to 1877, edited by Breen—Chapter 12
- Constructing the American Past, Vol. I, edited by Gorn, Roberts, and Bilhartz—Chapter 10
- American Experiences: Vol. I to 1877, edited by Roberts and Olson (secondary source readings)—Part Five