February 14, 2020

Today we examined the roles played by various events in the early governments after the Revolution.  We started out with a debrief discussion over last night's reading on Republican Motherhood, then proceeded to evaluate the government under the Articles of Confederation.  We then used the various reactions to Shay's rebellion to complicate the historical narrative from the textbook to make it more reflective of historical realities.  We ended the day by extending this to the topics the early governments of the United States had to face and compared our initial conclusions based on the textbook readings to information found in primary sources to discover the early governments actually spent much more time and effort on issues the textbook downplays, such as our example of relations with Indigenous nations, than on the topics and issues it highlights.  This also allowed us to critique some of the conclusions asserted by the textbook authors.

You are now facing a nice long four day weekend!  Make sure you have the Chapter 8a notes ready for Thursday and don't forget your first exam will be Friday!

​-H