I any case, as to what was accomplished in class today! In all groups, we took a brief step back and examined the state of the USA at the end of the revolutionary war. We looked at a map of North America, and examined the breakdown of the major competitors of territory in that period. (Spain, I'm looking at you and your colonial holdings.) We also reviewed the major problems with the government of the USA that existed in the revolutionary period under the Articles of Confederation. (The Continental Congress could borrow and spend money, but did not have the power to raise money through taxes. Also, there was no good system to resolve disputes between states.) The resulting war debt and tension between states led to rewriting the rules for government in the new Constitution, which would gain its first new President under the news laws of the executive branch in the person of George Washington.
After that, we went over the SARs from "The First President" text, and also stopped to review how westward expansion of the Americans forced out the natives. In all classes, this did not leave much time for science, so we will tackle that tomorrow.
In any case, the Uncertain Destiny was the next text we worked on in class, and those SARs are due tomorrow. The full text is below:
an_uncertain_destiny.docx |