The influence of President Woodrow Wilson on American foreign policy has been profound and lasting. Using a variety of primary sources, students analyze the origins of the ambitious foreign policy that came to be known as Wilsonianism and compare it with important alternative traditions in American foreign policy.

This lesson is about the Phoenicians, who invented the alphabet inherited by the Greeks, Romans, and eventually, us.

At the time the Founders were shaping the future of a new country, John Adams suggested the President should be addressed as "His Excellency." Happily, others recognized that such a title was inappropriate. Though the proper form of address represents only a small detail, defining everything about the Presidency was central to the idea of America that was a work-in-progress when the nation was young.

This lesson will introduce the students to the challenges of American foreign policy in the late 19th century and specifically to the political debate over whether the United States should acquire further territory and/or become a European-style empire.

This lesson will examine the ways in which Great Britain challenged American sovereignty in the early republic.

Lacking any organized army before 1775 (aside from local colonial militias), the Continental Congress had to assemble a more or less improvised fighting force that would be expected to take on the army of the world's largest empire. This lesson will trace events in the North from 1775 to 1778. By looking at documents of the time, and using an interactive map, students will see how an army was created and understand the challenges that Washington and his men faced during this critical early stage of the war.

American foreign policy continues to resonate with the issues involved in the entry of the United States into World War I"”unilateralism versus foreign alliances, the responsibilities of power, the influence of the military-industrial complex on foreign policy, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals. Understanding the choices the Wilson administration made and their consequences provides insight into international affairs in the years since the end of the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students reconsider the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I through the lens of archival documents.

What qualities made George Washington an effective military leader? How were the responsibilities of the Commander-in-Chief affected by conditions during the Revolutionary War?

The Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931 was only the first step in what became a much larger campaign to create a pro-Japanese "buffer state" in North China. This lesson will examine the overall principles which underlay both Japanese and American foreign policy in the mid- to late-1930s.

Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate the possibilities for black American progress in the 1960s.

One of Douglass's goals in his autobiography is to illustrate beyond doubt that slavery had an insidious, spirit-killing effect on the slaveholder as well as the slave.

In this lesson, students examine the First and Second National Banks and whether or not such a bank's powers are constitutional or unconstitutional.

In this lesson students will participate in a role-play activity that has them become members of a newspaper or magazine editorial board preparing a retrospective report about the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s.

Students develop a foundation on which to understand the basic disagreements between North and South.

Students examine Washington's ability to handle a wide range of problems during his time as Commander-in-Chief.

Students examine examples of primary documents (and some secondary accounts) that illuminate key points in President Madison's letter. The lesson identifies 10 statements in the message about which students are likely to have questions, and it provides relevant materials. If students raise questions about other sections of the letter, class members may be able to locate pertinent documents on their own, once they become familiar with some of the sources available in the records of Congress.

Using primary documents, this lesson aims to introduce students to how the American revolutionaries employed religion in their arguments for independence.

In this lesson, students will explore Dickinson's poem "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" both as it was published as well as how it developed through Dickinson's correspondence with her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

This lesson plan will explore the wide-ranging debate over American slavery by presenting the lives of its leading opponents and defenders and the views they held about America's "peculiar institution."

Did the increased right to vote translate into an increase in the percentage and totals of white males who actually voted? Students will look for connections between the candidacy of Andrew Jackson and trends in voter participation in the presidential election of 1828.