The era of the American Founding lasted from the 1770s through either the late 1780s or early 1790s, depending on one’s perspective or school of thought. For the sake of this resource, the Founding is defined as being the period from 1776 through 1789 – that is, from the writing of the Declaration of Independence through George Washington’s inauguration as the country’s first president. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to America's founding.

The African-American Civil Rights movement is typically seen as having taken place mostly in the 1950s and 60s, when a confluence of social and economic factors enabled political change. The movement, however, has much deeper roots, and thus our toolkit starts in the 19th Century, some two generations before leaders like King, Parks, and others were born. Viewing the Civil Rights movement as a generational one provides a broader perspective on the ideas and people at the foundation of this work to achieve “a more perfect union” for all Americans. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to the Civil Rights movement.

The American Civil War was fought from 1861-1865, and followed by the period of Reconstruction, generally accepted by scholars to have ended in 1877. The following collections include documents essential to gaining and understanding of how the war began, progressed, and ended, and how Reconstruction was conceived and attempted. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to the Civil War and reconstruction.

From the first years of the republic under the Constitution through the 1850s, America experienced rapid growth and expansion, opening new lands and opportunities for its people, and experiencing a variety of growing pains in the process. Political, social, and economic challenges confronted American political leaders, in some cases threatening the union. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to expansion and sectionalism.

Americans and the American system of government were faced with two existential challenges, overlapping, in the form of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The Great Depression, lasting more than a decade, created economic, social, and political challenges the country had never before experienced to such extents, and resulted in political and legal activity that had never before been considered. FDR’s expansion of the federal government was not only one of scope, but also reach, acting directly on individual Americans’ lives in ways it had never before. Adding to the challenges of the 1930s was the rise of expansionistic and belligerent dictatorships in Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the world war they caused. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to the the Great Depression and World War II.

A confluence of factors, including the quickening pace of industrialization, urbanization, increasing immigration, and a growing presence on the world stage faced America in the late 19th Century. These pressures gave rise to various political movements, each seeking to provide answers to the most serious questions of the day. Overall, Americans found answers to these issues in the ideas of the Progressives. From both major political parties, the Progressives offered solutions to economic, social, and political problems, in some ways using and in others changing the American system of government that had existed for a century at that point. This toolkit provides guiding questions and links to essential documents, resources, and lesson plans related to the progressive era.