Transnational Turns
This North‑American front of the Seven Years’ War reshaped British‑colonial relations and is often cited as a Revolutionary prelude.
What is the French and Indian War?
In Baltimore, this mistress first taught Douglass the alphabet before being ordered to stop.
Who is Sophia Auld?
This 1850 legislative package admitted California as a free state and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
Letters, diaries, and artifacts created at the time of an event are called these sources.
What are primary sources?
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Who is Frederick Douglass?
By purchasing this territory from Napoleon in 1803, the United States instantly doubled in size.
What is Louisiana (the Louisiana Purchase)?
Nicknamed a “slave‑breaker,” this farmer’s brutal beatings led Douglass to fight back around 1834.
Who is Edward Covey?
This Constitutional compromise counted a fraction of enslaved people for representation and taxation.
What is the Three‑Fifths Compromise?
Projecting modern values onto past actors—a form of unconscious bias—is known as this “‑ism.”
What is presentism?
“Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.”
Who is Abigail Adams (letter to John Adams, 1776)?
The success of this 1791‑1804 Caribbean revolution terrified U.S. slaveholders and influenced debate over slavery in the new Louisiana Territory.
What is the Haitian Revolution?
Douglass escaped bondage in this year.
What is 1838?
This amendment guards against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
What is the Fourth Amendment?
The study of how interpretations of the past have changed over time is called this.
What is historiography?
“We shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.”
Who is John Winthrop (1630 “Model of Christian Charity” sermon)?
This 1848 treaty ended the U.S.–Mexican War and transferred more than 500,000 square miles to the United States.
What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
Frederick Douglass was born in this Maryland county near Tuckahoe creek.
What is Talbot County?
The Senate’s power to approve treaties negotiated by the President illustrates this core principle of American government.
What are separation of powers / checks and balances?
Dividing the past into eras like “Early Republic” or “Antebellum” is practicing this methodological process.
What is periodization?
“There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God.”
Who is Jonathan Edwards (1741 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon)?
Dutch colonists established this 17th-century village (which would be renamed New York in 1664).
What is New Amsterdam?
Douglass escaped north disguised as this profession, using borrowed “protection papers.”
What is a (free Black) sailor?
Article I, Section 8 lets Congress regulate commerce “with foreign Nations, among the several States, and with” this third group.
Who are the Indian Tribes?
A narrative focused mainly on presidents, generals, and other elites—rather than ordinary people—is often criticized as this directional approach.
What is top‑down history?
“Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”
Who is John L. O’Sullivan (1845 essay coining “Manifest Destiny”)?