us history essay questions

us history essay questions

Exploring Key Themes in U.S. History Through Thought-Provoking Essay Questions

1. Introduction: The Significance of Essay Questions in Understanding U.S. History

Teachers of history, of course, recognize these goals, and many achieve them by utilizing innovative teaching philosophies and pedagogical materials consistent with understanding students’ cognitive and affective development. They know that students must experience the thrill of discovery and the zest of solving motives. Teachers emphasize that classroom learning should focus on analysis, evaluation, comprehension, correlation, and synthesis, and not solely on the acquisition of factual information. Today the study of history has become very conscious of the student as an active participant in the learning process, and the process itself is inquiry-based and oriented to problem-solving. If students are to respond to history’s challenge, it is incumbent on the classroom teacher to create a learning environment which is non-threatening, one which enables students to value their own individuality, foster self-respect, and acknowledge the worth of others.

One of the most important purposes of teaching history is to enable students to understand, explore, and appreciate differing viewpoints consistent with the supreme role a democratic society assigns to the competencies and potentialities of its individual members. A democratic society must provide for the participation of two kinds of citizens, the informed and the uninformed. The uninformed citizen is not privy to the atmosphere of free inquiry and open debate which are the hallmarks of democracy. Providing students with the necessary tools for arriving at a more profound understanding of human events is a high goal and a difficult task. It is not enough to memorize names, dates, and places. It is not enough to recognize an event out of context. There is a critical relationship between the event and the environment in which it occurs. It is not enough simply to regard history as the story about heroes, heroines, or villains in exotic costumes. In order to understand and interpret history, students must explore the nature of change in the concerns, motives, actions, and achievements in the world of people who lived, learned, savored, and suffered before them.

2. Section 1: The Founding of the United States

1. How did the colonial background prepare the country for the independence movement? 2. To what degree did political philosophical ideas motivate the demand for independence? 3. In what ways was the United States unique in its government and its political organization? 4. To what degree was there unity among the colonies during the colonial period? If there was a lack of unity, what circumstances brought about the later United States’ unity? 5. In what major ways did the external environment support the independence movement? 6. How did the American Revolution change the political, social, and economic relations previously characteristic of the colonies? 7. Were the causes for the war only political, or were the social and economic conflicts important in motivating resistance to alternative solutions short of war? 8. How important was the domestic background indirectly related to the causes of the war? 9. What major influences prompted the writing and adoption of the Articles of Confederation? 10. What major defects in the Articles of Confederation led to its rejection and the drafting of the Constitution?

3. Section 2: Expansion and Industrialization

Key Themes: The Expansion of Industry

Why did Congress pass protective tariff laws during this period? Who benefited from the tariff? Who bore the burden of the resulting higher prices?

Key Themes: The Federal Conscience Era

Do the problems, successes, and failures of the programs of the constructionist party justify the label “Era of Good Feelings” for the period during which it governed?

Key Themes: Sectional Tensions and Slavery

What issues in the Monroe Doctrine have appeared throughout American foreign policy from 1823 to recent times? What did Americans hope to achieve with this policy? How successful were they?

This section is divided into 5 essay questions. Each question explores a major theme in U.S. history, unpacks a common AP U.S. History question type, and provides key terms that represent 90% of the required course content.

4. Section 3: Civil Rights and Social Movements

Examine the strategic interaction between the national political parties and the civil rights movement during events leading up to and surrounding the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Is it possible to identify any “win-win” participation opportunities enjoyed by both the major political parties and this social movement – i.e., areas of cooperation that were both facilitated and acting as a beneficial focal point for participants from both of these oppositional organizations? If such opportunities could be found, should they have been considered examples of mutually desirable beneficial political empowerment, or rather examples of seriously conflicting interests that may have threatened the pursuit of distributive justice in American society today?

Historians often argue that the U.S. Constitution ensured the long-term failure of the abolition of slavery to prevent or moderate the profound natural rift that separated the northern and southern states. Explain what in the U.S. Constitution could have made it so difficult to resolve this particular conflict and what effect those institutions were likely to have had. In what ways might the release of so many institutional constraints have worsened the conflict, however? In what ways might it have helped to make this issue resolvable after all, as it obviously was? After all, this war was resolved, and it was resolved in favor of the North. Why was it very nearly worse, though, less amenable to convincing settlement in 1860-65, than any other between 1815 and 1945?

5. Conclusion: Reflecting on the Impact of U.S. History Essay Questions

In conclusion, the U.S. history essay questions presented in this article offer a taste of the type of essay questions that can help for twenty-first-century students and twenty-first century U.S. history. As the United States evolves, our understanding and teaching of U.S. history must also evolve. We need to rely on more than the “store” or the “parks and museums” or perhaps the ideas that were radical in the 1960s, but are now part of the old landmarks in our historical thinking. If our ideas about our world and our nation are based as they are at school – on the views of just one age group – then our opinions and our way of life can become very limited. By exploring U.S. history in the manner suggested by these essay questions, challenging our students, and fostering discussions of these questions that extend outside the classroom, history instructors can play a pivotal role in expanding their students’ – and thereby the nation’s – intellectual horizons. Then we can use U.S. history to answer some of the important questions about our ideas, our world, and our future.