US History Writing Prompts and Rubrics
Each prompt is based on an Author Video Lecture from MyHistoryLab. The titles given are the titles for the videos and the URLs link to the video.
(Prompt #1) James Fraser: The American Revolution as Different Americans Saw it
After more than a century and a half of English colonial settlement in North America, a coalition of British colonies along the east coast declared their independence from the British crown in the summer of 1776. In the seven years that followed, a bloody war raged, pitting British soldiers and loyal colonists against revolutionary colonists who identified themselves as American. The American Revolution took shape not immediately in the mid-1770s, but over the course of many years. The path to revolution was laid out clearly in 1763 with the end of Seven Years War between British and France, in which many American colonists had fought for Britain. Over the next 13 years, a series of policy decisions by the British Parliament alienated and enraged various groups of colonists, who slowly crafted a distinct national identity.
Consider the challenges anti-British colonists faced in cultivating a new national identity in the 1760s and 1770s. Since the early 1600s, English colonies in North America had been home to a wide variety of people, from different economic classes, ethnic and religious traditions, races, and regions. Think about ways that class, religious, and ethnic identity inhibited the formation of an anti-British coalition.
Write an essay that explains the origins of the American Revolution by discussing the specific complaints that different groups of Americans had against the British government. Your essay should explain the series of events between the early 1760s and 1776 that culminated in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. How did so many different groups of Americans, who had long considered themselves to be loyal British subjects, reach a point where they desired to be a free and independent people?
(Prompt #4) Edward O’Donnell: Mastering Time and Space—How the Railroads Changed America
In the early nineteenth century, a transportation revolution engulfed the United States. For thousands of years, travel had been limited to wind power on the sea and horse power on land. The development of self-contained steam engine technology allowed the transportation of people and goods at much faster rates. In the 1820s, steamboats revolutionized water transportation by allowing people to travel up-river and against the wind, increasingly along man-made canals. In the 1830s, the steam revolution extended to land, as railroads quickly grew to dominate overland transportation. The number of miles of railroad track grew rapidly, from zero in 1830 to 9000 miles in 1850. At the same time, the number and profits of railroad companies rose dramatically and the United States became increasingly interconnected. As railroads spread, communications also increased, both through the faster delivery of mail and the spread of the electronic telegraph, whose poles and wires accompanied railroad lines across the country.
The revolution in transportation fundamentally changed nearly all aspects of American life. Think about how daily life for farmers, industrial laborers, business owners, and financiers changed as a result of the rapid movement of goods and people along railroads.
Write an essay that explains how the advent of steam-powered railroads changes America’s economic and social life during the 19th century. Your essay should consider the effects of the railroad on the movement of agricultural goods to urban centers and port cities, as well as the spread of manufactured consumer products. How did railroads contribute to the growth of the American economy during the mid-19th century? How did ease of transportation and communication lead to growing cities, particularly away from the East Coast?
(Prompt #5) David Goldfield: What caused the Civil War? (previously Prompt #7)
The first black African slaves arrived in what would become the United States in 1619, and by the time of American independence from Britain, slavery was practiced throughout the country. By the early 1800s, however, slavery largely disappeared in the North, even as it became more prominent and more entrenched in the South. As the boom in textile manufacturing, both in the Northeast and in Britain, increased the demand for Southern grown cotton, the Southern economy’s dependence on slavery grew ever strong. At the same time, Southern culture embedded the institution of slavery and a system of racial hierarchy all the more firmly. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president as a Republican, a party that clearly opposed the extension of slavery, many Southerners came to believe that the institution faced immediate existential threat. As a result of Lincoln’s election, South Carolina seceded from the country in December 1860. In the months that followed, growing regional hostility led ten other states to follow.
The decision to secede from the union did not come lightly to the political leaders of the states that joined the Confederacy. They were aware that they would most likely be forced to defend their secession through military conflict with an industrially and numerically superior North. Consider the many obstacles that stood in the way of southern independence, and the conviction required to take that step. Think also about the role of slavery in southern life, on a material level as well as a cultural level.
Write an essay that explains how Southern political leaders became convinced that the institution of slavery was under attack by the North, and especially by Lincoln and the Republican party. Your essay should explain how the debates over the future of slavery changed in the generation before the Civil War began in 1861. Why was slavery so important to Southern political leaders that they seceded.