Social Studies Curriculum

United States History

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Expanding Nation (1820-1868)

One week (Week 6)

Enduring Understanding

The students will understand:

1. The American Republic constantly redefines itself, due to pressures of advancing technology, immigration, social reform, and territorial expansion.

Essential Questions

1. How does territorial expansion cause regional tensions? 
2. What is the impact of changing technology?
3. What is the impact of the changing labor force?
4. What role does social and political reform movements play in this period of change?
5. What is the changing relationship of peoples of different origins? 

Objectives

• Analyze the concept of Manifest Destiny and its application through the settlement and annexation of western territories including California, Texas, Utah, and Oregon.
• Examine the causes and outcomes of the Mexican War.
• Explore the role of mountain men, missionaries, Mormons, miners, military, and pioneers in the settlement of the west. 
• Examine the Second Great Awakening and its role in reform movements of 1800’s.
• Examine the beliefs and contributions of Transcendentalism.
• Examine the religious and utopian movements of this era, i.e. the Shakers, Mormons, Brook Farm, and New Harmony.
• Analyze the South’s “peculiar institution” and the rise of abolition including the American Colonization Society through the rise of Liberty and Free Soil Parties and the Underground Railroad.
• Examine basic reform trends in temperance, education, and the treatment of criminals and the insane, and women’s rights movement.
• Discuss the purchase of Alaska.
• Define essential terms including: annexation, the Alamo, Goliad, San Jacinto, Republic of Texas, California Gold Rush, forty-niners, canal, Mexican Cession, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Gadsden Purchase, Seneca Falls Convention, Homestead Act, abolition.
• Reflect on the contributions of the following Americans: Stephen Austin, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Eli Whitney, William H. Seward.

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