ap us history essay examples

ap us history essay examples

Analyzing Key Themes in AP US History through Essay Examples

1. Introduction to AP US History Essays

Students will have the opportunity to demonstrate understanding through any variety of assessment types. Throughout the course, reading and discussion will emphasize students’ understanding, insight, and expression. Students will encounter multiple primary and secondary source documents and read a recently widely recognized monograph as well as assigned readings in the textbook “The Americans” by Danzer et al. Activities include examining and analyzing source materials and essay writing. To prepare for the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam, students will learn to write Effective Critical Essays during the course. In the course, a variety of time periods and major themes will be considered, including different stakeholders’ perspectives.

The Advanced Placement U.S. History course engages students in a careful study of a broad spectrum of this nation’s historical periods and events. The course requires the critical analysis of historical movements and the use of primary source documents, essays, and writing that is expected at a freshman college level. High participation, extensive reading, and study are expected of all participants. Several themes cut globally across the content of AP U.S. History. We will focus on six of these in this essay: The Role of Government; The Economy; Environmental Issues; Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Immigration; and, of course, The Changing Role of the Nation in the World.

2. Exploring the Role of Economic Factors in Shaping US History

The post-World War II era saw several changes in defense policy in response to economic and domestic political factors. The military became more politically savvy, assisting in continually expanding budget requests. Basic regulatory changes have introduced a more corporate atmosphere to the military, causing a breakdown of the Army’s once relatively egalitarian structure. The Army finds itself in a position of solving its structural and personnel formation problem under the constraints of a declining budget. Economic factors have played a dominant role in shaping American history. Only the military has become more politicized, reflecting economic and not national interest.

The earliest years of the American colonies featured an economic system dependent on commercial development. Negative effects spinning out of the development of this system caused the colonists to revolt against Great Britain. Although the American Revolution was significant in American history, it represented the political high point of the American commercial development that continued afterwards. Subsequent developments in the area of political development reflected the ascendancy of large urban centers with their strong economic and political elites.

Economic factors, including commercial development, interest groups, labor issues, and government regulations, have played dominant roles in shaping American history. The following essays deal with economic factors in specific historical periods and in various analytical ways.

3. Examining the Influence of Political Movements on US Society

One of the main beliefs was that there were too many loopholes that governments had to fill, thus interfering with the working of the free market. Not mincing the words, the state of South Carolina claimed that the New Deal was simply a socialist plot to redo America in the name of a totalitarian dictatorship. Despite these stands that politicians who supported a woman’s right to divorce, and likewise minorities had taken, many laws that they opposed were passed because they were supported by a significant amount of dialogue within society. The New Deal, Reconstruction, and other reform movements were successful because they relied on the powers provided to them by the Supreme Court. Finally, all political movements in American politics have been short-lived.

Throughout the history of the United States, various political movements have emerged and impacted various aspects of American society. For example, antebellum reform movements sought to change American society by pressuring the government to pass laws that made alcohol illegal. Other movements, such as the New Deal, believed that the key to real reform was to have the federal government work to change aspects of American life. Operation Wetback, a movement in the 1950s that sought to repatriate over a million American citizens, and many other movements believed that the real problem was that government programs interfered with the working of the free market, and thus the federal government should do as little as possible to affect American life. Overall, the political beliefs of powerful individuals have had a profound influence over the political environment of the past and present states of America.

4. Understanding the Impact of Social Changes on American Identity

The civil rights era, as it is known, is a significant part of the American past, for it dealt directly with the issue of race relations that had plagued the nation from its inception. Jennifer Clark states that “the civil rights movement’s most lasting victory was its role in redefining for many Americans what the functions of government should be—which is to assure equal rights to all.” The Vietnam War was another problem the U.S. government had to face. During this time, such peace-seeking movements as the Students for a Democratic Society and the Hippie movements sprouted up in opposition. It was time to change the American identity.

Between 1964 and 1980, tremendous social change took place in the United States. People began to question accepted behaviors and attitudes on a variety of subjects such as race and sex. Many political, social, and economic institutions came under attack. Early in this period, people thought that the “Vietnam War would be over in ‘six months,'” and Williams Jennings Bryan’s Christian Fundamentalism declined rapidly after the Scopes Monkey Trial. But in reality, “the war would last nine years and Fundamentalism would endure into the 1970s, and even beyond. American politics and society would never be the same.” This period of social upheaval is known as the counter-culture.

5. Conclusion: Reflecting on the Significance of Essay Examples in Studying AP US History

Benefits like these cause teachers of US History want to show a willingness to steer instruction their students’ way. And by studying the themes common to AP US History as entered with examples of typical essays found outside of the chapters for most sections, they can actually illustrate their determination. A study that they have chosen to exhibit through CollectEdNY, an on-line archive for bringing together teaching examples with collections of student work, is a good place to start. For getting to know the AP US History key themes in brief discussions inserted at the beginning of every section but omitted from the more detailed first pages of each chapter, they have grouped their many examples and outlined their common themes for use here. These themes signal, in written work produced by advanced students who knew enough about US History to get their ideas in essays, some of the strength of discussions that readers of textbooks come to recognize in helping their students fly through key themes in this field.

For students as readers who use textbooks, under the safe but potentially misleading watch of the teacher, are laboring with really college-level reading that provides them with brief looks at how summaries of last sections in chapters draw on the idea-connections that are available every few pages between the text paragraphs. Even when the teacher is wary of laying the assignment on too thick and discusses some of the themes that cross lecture ideas with those in the text, as their backgrounds in history installations and American culture cause their communications with the students in his or her classroom to leak, it is left to students to steer their in-class conversations, turned discussions with one another, to arrive at the proper conclusions. They are learning, with discussion in the classroom all the while, how to make ideas from history stick to facts and so connect with those of others that the discussions end up being sound efforts that put the public to Luria.

Given the extent to which American history is filled with controversies, it can involve, students of this subject need some help in pinning down what really happened without working through a maze of details. There is a special shortcut available to them as they learn to get their ideas about the national past into verba: their textbooks. While students start writing essays in every American history class as they sit down to answer questions, they also labor with the assignment of arranging the numerous speculations in ideas that have been derived from their textbooks while struggling to keep up with the instructor as he or she leads the class through a set of topics. They find themselves trying to state, as well as they can under the pressure of the clock, the explanations of why the Civil War happened after tapping mental reservoirs filled with whatever might have stuck, and what might still be hanging on, from years of reading and reviewing in the field marked “AP US History.” These are lessons that cut deeper than they seem to at the time because they influence who and what the learners become as a consequence of mastering the secrets involved.