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CHAPTER THREE
Politics of the American Founding
Exercises
Test your knowledge of the American Revolution
- Go to the PBS documentary Liberty! The American Revolution web site.
- Click on the "Road to the Revolution Game" link at the top of the page.
- Answer the questions. When you answer a question correctly, you have the opportunity to peruse a historical document or watch a video of a historian describing the importance of the event or issue at question. Real Player is needed to view the commentary.
Understand the documents that led to the Constitution
- Go to the web site for the Constitution Center.
- Click on the "Explore the Constitution" tab at the top of the page.
- Click on the "Founding Documents" option in the left-hand column.
- Pick three of the documents listed, and answer the following questions:
- What aspects of the documents were incorporated into the Constitution?
- What parts of the documents were not incorporated in the Constitution? Why do you think these were left out?
- Be sure to check out the "Interactive Constitution" option under the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Reconstruction Amendments. See excerpts from the original Constitution side-by-side with explanations of these excerpts from The Words We Live by award-winning author and journalist Linda Monk.
Would you revolt?
- Access the original copy of Thomas Paine's Common Sense by visiting Archiving Early America, a web site that provides primary source material from eighteenth-century America. In addition to ground-breaking documents, you'll find a digital archive of music (requires Windows Media Player), portraits, videos (requires FLASH), biographies of famous Americans, and much more.
- After reading Paine's pamphlet, answer the following questions:
- What reasons does Paine use to justify revolution?
- Why do you think Paine's arguments resonated so much with the colonists?
- Clearly Paine is presenting a one-sided account. How do you think the King of England responded to Paine's writing?
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