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Toolbox LibraryTrainingMaking the Revolution: America, 1763-1791
Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1791
Theme: Crisis Theme: Rebellion Theme: War Theme: Independence Theme: Constitution
Theme - Independence: 1783-1791


INDEPENDENCE

Framing Questions
  • How did Americans envision independence and nationhood in the first years after the Revolutionary War?
  • How did they begin to construct a national identity separate from their colonial identity as British subjects?
  • In what ways was the new nation like "a child just learning to walk"? What postwar challenges most reflected this "state of infancy"?


1.  Victory & Union» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, #13, 1783
- Gen. George Washington, Circular Letter to the States, 1783, selections
- Newsboys' new year's greetings after independence, five poems, 1784-1790

2.  Promise & Peril» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution, 1789, selections
- Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805, selections
- Richard Price, Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, 1784, selections

3.  Progress & Identity» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Founding documents of societies to promote progress and national identity, 1780-1791, selections
- Noah Webster, essays on fostering American identity, 1783 & 1787, selections

4.  Patriots & Loyalists» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Alexander Hamilton & Isaac Ledyard, pamphlet war on the postwar treatment of Loyalists, 1784, selections

5.  A Golden Age» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Anonymous, The Golden Age: Or, Future Glory of North America, allegory, 1785, selections

6.  A New Man: The American» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur (writing as J. Hector St. John), "What Is an American?" Letter III of Letters from an American Farmer, written late 1760s-early 1770s, publ. 1782, selections
- Royall Tyler, The Contrast, comedy of manners, 1787

7.  A Model for Europe» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Abbé Claude Robin, New Travels through North America (1781), publ. 1782, selections
- Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America (1788), publ. 1791, selections

8.  A Heads-Up for Europeans» Text Links / Note / Discussion Questions

- Benjamin Franklin, Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, 1782, selections
- Benjamin Rush, Information to Europeans Who Are Disposed to Migrate to the United States of America, 1790, selections





Images of the Great Seal of the United States of America:
– Final design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782, by Secretary of State Charles Thomson. Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives.
– First great seal, 1782, engraving from die possibly made by Robert Scot of Philadelphia (design used into the 1840s); drawing of imprint from the 1782 die by Walter Manton, in Gaillard Hunt, The Seal of the United States, 1892. Digital image courtesy of Wikipedia.
– Current design of the Great Seal of the United States. Courtesy of the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury, Bureau of Engraving and Printing.






INDEPENDENCE
1. Victory & Union 2. Promise & Peril 3. Progress & Identity
4. Patriots & Loyalists 5. A Golden Age 6. A New Man: The American
7. A Model for Europe 8. A Heads-Up for Europeans




TOOLBOX: Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1791
Crisis | Rebellion | War | Independence | Constitution



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