us history essay topics

us history essay topics

Exploring Key Moments in U.S. History: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction

The purpose of this curriculum project was to provide teachers with a book in which events in United States history are described in children’s literature form. The American timeline is long and extensive, and not all key moments can be represented in one book. Therefore, it is for classroom teachers and librarians to use these events as a place to start their social studies teaching. Each year, teachers can design the curriculum to integrate the necessary standards, and the book may be utilized more than once. Through the analysis, it was evident how close relationships between literacy and history are. This project was designed to help third- and fourth-grade teachers meet state content standards in history by emphasizing key moments in knowledge in Indiana and the United States, making a global contact. The individuals and events described in each chapter are representative of the exemplary list. These individuals and events are suitable for each grade level, leading teachers and students through historical study within the adequate performance levels of varying competency. Note that this project is likely not significant for teachers below the third grade. Generally, third-grade students in Indiana are expected to be able to construct a timeline for significant historical events. Of these 20 crucial people and events in U.S. history, third-grade students will be able to recognize 12, and fourth-grade students will be able to recognize all 20 people and events. It is also recommended that after attaining this information, teachers should add to and elaborate on the additional individuals and events. Collaboration with a school media specialist is strongly encouraged in order to incorporate literature and technology into the study of each topic. The librarian and teacher may choose to use the unit as an ongoing project. Generally, the classroom teacher may use the book for instruction in history that is specific to each person as it relates to their students and historical events. Students gain an understanding of each historical moment, while flexibility allows teachers to focus on each historical event and begin to plan and integrate literacy around each story used.

It is important for elementary students to begin learning history at an early age, so they can understand the significance of it within the development of their community and nation. The recommended Social Studies Standards of the National Council of the Social Studies (NCSS) state that elementary students should have the ability to comprehend the significance of individuals and key events in United States history and their interactions with the rest of the world. Additionally, students are expected to become knowledgeable about the local community and community around the world in relation to other people and their past, present, and future. The state of Indiana also has content standards that outline how history can be taught to elementary students. The goals for students in kindergarten and the primary grades of at least two through five are the following: 1) to become social studies literate and that they are capable of understanding, participating in, and knowing the principles of democracy; 2) to understand the interactions between individuals and the community by recognizing important people and symbolic meanings; and 3) to explore the past and present of different societies and their social systems and focus on the unique features of their cultures.

2. The American Revolution: Catalyst for Independence

In a sense, the mother country was punished in her own right for having achieved such a degree of stability and unity, and the resulting preeminence over the rest of Europe. The way was now clear for the 13 rebellious colonies to finally sever their political ties with the artificial constraints which had been imposed on them from mother England. De facto, this meant that the major threat of any commercial or mercantile colonial competition had been erased by 1776, leaving this new nation the way to pursue its manifest destiny. In 1776, America was now also on her way to becoming an independent country under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Symbols of this achievement were the drafting and eventual signing of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of a new set of ideals which were firmly embedded in the appropriate institutions of the new country at the birth of a new nation. Incidentally, the carrying out of this act also postponed the day of worldwide emancipation of the oppressed and frustrated.

Despite the overwhelming debt burden and the rising expectations of colonists, it should be kept in mind that the vast majority of Americans in 1775 were proud to be British subjects and retain an identification with Great Britain. Nevertheless, by 1775 there were high hopes of finally achieving parliamentary representation. After all, the 13 colonies had achieved considerable importance to England and had come of age. Each successive colonial war, including the French and Indian War a decade earlier, awarded expanded colonists with rebellious proclivity and gave them a greater sense of both self-importance and strength. Although this decade had not only seen wild expectations and as many as 30,000 individual petitions for land west of the Appalachians, there was a collective sense of potential of that land for individuals and future generations of colonists.

3. The Civil War: A Divided Nation

The dividing line between the sections, as first formed by the ordinances of 1787 and 1789, were extended by numerous compromises through the work of the “Great Triumvirate” of 1850. But within ten years, the gulf had widened beyond the power of conciliatory efforts to bridge the gap. In the seceding states, failure to recognize the just title of slavery led to a feeling on the part of Southerners that ultimate collapse was at hand. The Deep South acted first. Within ten weeks after Lincoln’s election, seven southern states declared themselves out of the union. The Gulf states seceded first, four by conventions at Montgomery, Alabama. These states then met in congress to consider a form of government for the Confederacy. A provisional constitution was adopted and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected President. The establishment of the Confederate States of America was an official reality. So what then were the “long term” and “immediate” causes?

The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in the fall of 1860 was the culmination of a series of events in several vital areas of the expanding republic. The series of compromises which had held the nation together since 1820 when Missouri sought admission into the Union as a slave state were no longer effective. The slavery issue, in its broadest context, was the basic reason for the breakup of the Union. The question of whether territories organized as states should enter the Union as free states or slave states was a delicate and dangerous question. In reality, however, it was the extension of slavery which was the focal issue that led to the George’s divorce. For, in a sense, slavery was the political and economic backbone of the southern social order. The economic and sectional rivalries between the two sections created a gulf too deep and wide for reasonable reconciliation between the divergent forces.

4. The Civil Rights Movement: Striving for Equality

In the deep segregation of the South, nonviolent tactics and boycotts were given a trial in the public service of state and local governments. Sit-ins and freedom rides of the student movement and youth spurned a confrontation with Jim Crow defies the public that we were not leaving. When traditional patterns of nonviolent protest could bring meaningful change, self-defense became an option. No organization representing the Black people of the United States accepted a plan to be niggers again, and the franchise, nor the citizenship rights of African-Americans godlessly finished his short presidential term by ending legal segregation. Federal enforcement of the law represented one of the successes of the African American struggle, producing discussions that would be realized in suits and law enforcement of both the private and public sector. No societal, but legal change had been initiated, helping others confront and achieve rights, also not guaranteed – and at a terrible cost.

After World War II, African American leaders, facing unemployment, segregation, and discriminatory wages, were men who ended segregation in the armed forces to ensure that this debilitating rights struggle could continue to be fought at home. Civil rights organizations and work led by World War II veterans declared that if white citizens could fight against Fascism, then they needed to fight in the United States for their own freedom. Tactics of confrontation took place, including legal challenges to the racial separation of public employment, political issues, social leadership, issues of freedom, and international commitments were all legally challenged, changing the law of the United States and demonstrating that enforcement of the law could bring change.

5. The Cold War: Superpower Rivalry and Global Impact

The Cold War was a fifty-year-long state of political conflict and military tension between the superpowers. The two superpowers at the time, the United States and the Soviet Union, stopped short of an overt armed conflict. As a nuclear deterrent, they relied heavily on mutual accusations that any moves made by the other could be interpreted as threatening each other directly. Although Soviet and American conflict occurred in some limited applications in proxy wars, there was an unprecedented absence of historical defeat. At its influence-touched peaks, the Cold War implied various concepts, including nuclear arms competition, the space race, economic crises, decolonization, supreme political movements, and rivalry between neighboring wars. The Cold War was the first great movement in modern history of global warfare for a series of experimental brinkmanship in military and diplomatic affairs. Over a period of three and forty years, unprecedented retaliation was carried out in political, technological, military, and economic strategies. Throughout the Cold War, both capitalists of the Western countries and the communist world competed to destroy any political beliefs they held during U.S. clientism and Sovietization. With the end of the Cold War, the United States was unified in promoting democracy, and later other wars, as the political foundation of global obligation and participation.

The Cold War marked a period of military and political tension between two nations: the United States and the Soviet Union. It commenced from 1945 to 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved. The Cold War was “cold” because the United States and the Soviet Union did not go into full-scale fighting, wherein their respective principal allies or satellite states served as the frontline of their conflicts. During the Cold War, the United States sought to prevent the spread of communism by the Soviet Union through a policy founded on military, economic, and diplomatic strategies that would lead to a larger United States. Unlike other wars, the Cold War does not have a clear beginning. However, historians agree that the U.S. policy represented the first major post-war challenge by the then Soviet Union. In all significant states, the U.S. policy was to stop the spread of communism.

6. Conclusion

The puzzle that we have posed on the role of democracy appears to have enough structure as to be addressed with our existing theories. The observed time-series pattern provides a basin of different real interest rates at which structural changes of different durations can activate. Our story has overall acceptance and Keynesian periods when attempts to accumulate capital cause high taxes which lead to the highest real interest rates. Such accumulation failures are associated with both negative technological and demographic factors. In this research, we have shown that in addition to Keynesian liquidity traps, there is also a democratic “liquidity trap” based on a comparably speculative story of capital at the height of power. Both theories (as well as other theories that would predict extreme real interest rates) can be tested by observing the timing of important events. We provide some evidence that this time series’ timing pattern in the U.S. is at least suggestive that political and democratic systems are linked in important ways.

In conclusion, we believe that the key moments we have chosen for investigation enable a better understanding of U.S. economic and political history. Certainly, we do not deny that many other events could have been chosen and that we may have biased ourselves somewhat by the type of variables we have ready access to for this type of comparative quantitative analysis. Furthermore, our current work uses these facts to provide information on how outcomes relate to political and democratic systems. Future work will use this information to estimate a more complete model where democracy is valued both for the direct rate of influence on the importance of domestic political and social events and also for its possible indirect influence through future demographic and technological factors.