Teaching the Emancipation Proclamation on Constitution Day

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Print, The day of Jubelo, c. 1865, Edmund Birckhead Bensell, LoC
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Are you ready for September 17? The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is. This year, the NEH will celebrate Constitution Day by honoring the Constitution together with another pivotal document from U.S. history: the Emancipation Proclamation. With the Proclamation's 150th anniversary approaching, Constitution Day is the perfect time to compare and contrast the promises made in the Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation.

From the NEH's Emancipation Resource Portal, you can access resources and learn more about planned events. Highlights include:

  • A live, streamed performance on Constitution Day. A panel of Civil War scholars will "recreate the national scene and the dilemmas facing Americans on Sept. 22, 1862." Students will be able to submit questions via Twitter or email. (Register your "watch party" here.)
  • A contest asking students to interpret a primary source from the Freedmen and Southern Society Project or Visualizing Emancipation. (The contest is limited to students 18 years of age or older, but consider adapting the contest concept for your own school or classroom.)
  • Related lesson plans from EDSITEment.
  • An interactive timeline of emancipation from 1850 to 1877.

For more on the Emancipation Proclamation, check out materials highlighted here on Teachinghistory.org. Watch 8th-grade teacher Jason Fitzgerald introduce his students to the Proclamation using letters from Civil War soldiers. (Download the letters here as you listen to historian Chandra Manning analyze their contents.)

Or join historian John Buescher in this Ask a Historian as he considers what makes a document a founding document. Is it a document that stands for part of what the U.S. represents? A document from the country's founding?

As your students prepare for Constitution Day, the NEH's theme gives you the perfect chance to ask, "In what ways are the Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation both founding documents?" Analyzing them together gives students a unique opportunity to explore the changing definition of "We the People."

Founding Documents

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Signature of George Mason
Question

In trying to set up a lesson describing the Four Major Founding Documents of the United States of America, there was debate as to the fourth. The U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation are typically considered the founding documents, but what is widely believed to be the fourth document?

Answer

I have not found a commonly agreed upon list of precisely four documents. History lessons that focus on the founding documents, however, invariably include the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They also include the Bill of Rights, but because these are amendments to the Constitution, sometimes they are folded into the Constitution, along with the other amendments.

The Meanings of "Founding"

From there, filling out a short list of four—or a few more—documents largely depends on how we construe the meaning of the word "founding."

Filling out a list depends on how we construe the meaning of the word "founding."

If it means foundational for the initial establishment of the U.S., that is, what got the country up and running, we could consider adding the Federalist (and perhaps the Anti-Federalist) Papers or the Articles of Confederation. Other documents strongly affecting the founding itself included John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, and even, at long range, the Magna Carta. Also, as precedent to the Bill of Rights, we might include George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights. Along these lines, therefore, a list of "the Four Major Founding Documents" that could be studied in class might be: 1) the Declaration of Independence, 2) the Constitution, 3) the Bill of Rights, and 4) the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers.

If "founding," however, means foundational for clarifying how we have come to understand our country today, the list of documents grows in a different direction and becomes difficult to limit.

If "founding," however, means foundational for clarifying how we have come to understand our country today, the list of documents grows in a different direction and becomes difficult to limit. Some candidates for inclusion might be the Mayflower Compact, the Northwest Ordinances, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, and the "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Several years ago, the National Archives and Records Administration collected a list of 100 milestone documents in American history called Our Documents. The list begins, chronologically, with the Richard Henry Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, proposing independence for the American colonies, and runs through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For more information

National Archives, "Teaching With Documents: U.S. Constitution Workshop":
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/constitution-workshop/

John J. Patrick, "Teaching America's Founding Documents," ERIC Digest, November 2002:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pric/is_200211/ai_3178660388/

Bibliography

Images:
1876 facsimile of the text of the Declaration of Independence as it appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776.

Signature of George Mason, 1785, from the George Mason Manuscript Collection, Gunston Hall, Virginia.

Detail of copy of the Constitution of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

Teaching Resources for Constitution Day

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September 17, 1787, was a seminal day for America.

Earlier that year in May, spurred by inadequacies in the Articles of Confederation and the need for a strong centralized government, 55 delegates representing 12 states met in Philadelphia to "take in to consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."

In secret proceedings, the delegates argued and debated throughout the summer about the duties, responsibilities, form, and distribution of power in the new government. Then, on September 17, 39 of the delegates signed a four-page document— a Constitution consisting of a Preamble and seven articles proposing the infrastructure of American government. Then the ratification process began.

Constitution and Citizenship Day, initiated in 2005 and observed on September 17, commemorates the event and mandates that each educational institution receiving Federal funds conduct an educational program on the Constitution on that day. Background papers, interactive lesson plans, and supporting materials abound for classroom use. We mention only a few below.

Department of Education

At the Department of Education, the Teaching American History Team at the Office of Innovation lists several essential resources from Federal institutions, including FREE, the Department of Education's own internet library highlighting 28 diverse teaching resources on the Constitution.

The Teaching American History team also annotates the varied resources of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) including high resolution scans of the original signed Constitution with transcripts and factual support.

From the National Constitution Center to to iTunes

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia describes its facilities as the only museum devoted to the U.S. Constitution and the story of We, the people. But for those too far away to visit, the museum offers extensive materials for educators, including the Interactive Constitution, enabling keyword and topical exploration of the Constitution as well as analysis of landmark Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution.

Have you attended iTunes University? The National Constitution Center is among the organizations presenting free audio files related to all aspects of the document and its meaning. Listen online or download We the People Stories where experts present ideas on everything from today's relevance of the Constitution, to talks about George Washington, the relationship of the Constitution to the Olympics, and presidential elections— few topical stones are left unturned. (This series is also available via podcasts.)

Do you know which Article of the Constitution created Congress or what the powers of Congress actually are? In its Capitol Classroom, the U.S. Capitol Historical Society challenges visitors to take a quiz to test Constitutional knowledge. Tiered levels offer questions appropriate to 8–11-year-olds through the Constitutional Scholar level.

Among its many resources, the Bill of Rights Institute offers a variety of educational resources free of charge. Weekly eLessons provide 20-minute discussion guides for middle and high school history and government teachers. Educating the Next Generation, a blog, highlights classroom applications and current resources.

The Library of Congress provides a consolidated listing of resources for teachers, including primary sources, lesson plans, Stories for Kids from America's Library, and links to American Memory Collections.

Discussions, Multimedia, and Lesson Plans

The National Endowment for the Humanities educational site, EdSITEment, consolidates comprehensive resources for teaching about the Constitution, amendments, and the people who made it happen. From lesson plans (K–12) to webography, from biographies and bibliography to teaching with art in the classroom, EdSITEment's presentation of resources offers a wealth of materials to deepen our understanding and approaches to teaching about this document and its meaning.

EdSITEment's inclusion of materials for elementary and middle school students is particularly valuable. A few of those resources are highlighted:

The Preamble to the Constitution: How Do You Make a More Perfect Union? helps students, grades 3–5, understand the purpose of the Constitution and the values and principles explicated in the Preamble.

The Constitutional Convention: What the Founding Fathers Said, designed for 6–8th graders, looks at transcriptions of debates of the Founding Fathers to learn how differences were resolved.

The Constitutional Convention: Four Founding Fathers You May Never Have Met is designed for 6–8th graders and introduces lesser-known key players in the development of the Constitution.

A roundtable discussion published in Common-place, the interactive, online journal, includes eight paired essays in which historians, political scientists, journalists, and lawyers examined the uses and abuses of the Constitution in contemporary American political affairs. Jill Lepore, Jack Rakove, and Linda Kerber are among the discussants.

The Social Studies and History resources of Annenberg Media: Learner.org include the Emmy-Award-winning series The Constitution: That Delicate Balance . In this series of free, video-on-demand presentations designed for high school and above, key political, legal, and media professionals engage in spontaneous and heated debates on controversial issues such as campaign spending, the right to die, school prayer, and immigration reform. The resources emphasize the impact of the Constitution on history and current affairs. The Annenberg Newsletter highlights additional resources.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases provides teachers with a full range of resources and activities to support the teaching of the impact of cases such as Marbury vs Madison, Plessy vs Ferguson, and Brown vs. Board of Education. Background summaries of individual cases and questions for three different reading levels are graded from the highest to those appropriate for ESOL students. Resources include many case-specific short activities and in-depth lessons that can be completed with students.

James Madison's Failed Amendments

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Medallion of James Madison
Question

James Madison proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution, but only 10 were approved. What were the two that were not?

Answer

When the Constitutional Convention sent the proposed Constitution to the states for ratification, Anti-Federalists voiced strong objections to it, especially criticizing the strength it invested in the national government and its lack of explicit protections for the rights of individuals. Politicians in several states were able to secure their states' ratification of the Constitution only with the promise that it would be almost immediately amended.

In 1789, James Madison, then an elected member from Virginia of the First Congress's House of Representatives, proposed 19 amendments meant to answer the objections already raised in the states. The Senate consolidated and trimmed these down to 12, which were approved by Congress and sent out to the states by President Washington in October, 1789.

The states ratified the last 10 of the 12 amendments. They became the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and are now referred to as the Bill of Rights. Not enough states (10 were needed at the time) ratified the first two of Madison's original 12, however, and they did not become law.

The first of these would have established how members of the House of Representatives would be apportioned to the states. It was drafted to ensure that members of the House would continue to represent small constituencies even as the general population grew, small enough that Representatives would not be too far removed from the concerns of citizens. In addition, keeping the House of Representatives from being too small was thought to protect against its becoming a kind of oligarchy. Congress did send this amendment to the states, but the number of states that ratified it was just short of the number needed. Although the proposed amendment did not become law, Congressional apportionment is nevertheless grounded in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3) and the total number of members of the House of Representatives is set by federal statute (currently at 435).

The second of Madison's 12 amendments forbade Congress from giving itself a pay raise: Congress could vote for a raise but it would only apply from the beginning of the next Congress. This amendment also failed to gather the required number of state ratifications in the years after it was introduced. In 1982, however, Gregory Watson, a university student doing research for a government class, ran across a description of this amendment and realized that it remained "alive" because it had included no language in it about a window of time in which it had to gain the needed number of state ratifications. Watson organized a successful effort to lobby various state legislatures, seeking their ratification of the amendment. As a result, the needed number was eventually reached and this amendment, first proposed in 1789, became the 27th (and most recent) amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1992.

Bibliography

Richard E. Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-federalists: critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2004)

David J. Siemers, The Antifederalists: men of great faith and forbearance (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

John R. Vile, A Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments, 4th edition (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006).

John W. Dean, "The Telling Tale of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment: A Sleeping Amendment Concerning Congressional Compensation Is Later Revived," September 27, 2002 (at FindLaw).

Images:
Portrait etching of James Madison and detail of broadside, printed by Bennett Wheeler, Providence, R.I., 1789.

James Madison medallion, frontispiece of William Cabell Rives, History of the Life and Times of James Madison (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859).

Bill of Rights Institute

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Screenshot, Bill of Rights Institute home page
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This website offers opportunities for teachers and students to explore the Bill of Rights in a multitude of ways and includes information about educational opportunities for students and teachers in addition to their online content. (The institute puts on Constitutional seminars for teachers as well as a Constitution Academy and essay contest for students.)

On the website itself teachers will find information on Constitution Day, more than 90 lesson plans which incorporate the Bill of Rights, daily news headlines relating to the Bill of Rights, and one-to-three sentence summaries of more than 150 Supreme Court cases in 15 different thematic categories such as freedom of speech, federalism, and freedom of the press. The Supreme Court case feature is especially useful if you are looking for a brief description of the case and its central issues.

The site is very easy to navigate and the Institute has clearly made an effort to streamline the search for information. One particular example of this is the Americapedia. This resource allows teachers and students to find identifications and definitions for people and words commonly associated with the study of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Americapedia is organized into five categories—Civic Values, The Constitution, Documents, Landmark Supreme Court Cases, and People—with 15–60 definitions in each section.

Another area of this site clearly designed for ease of use is the primary documents section. In this section you will find 11 foundational primary source documents in addition to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other amendments. Such a short list of documents means finding relevant information quickly, but some may find this section quite limited if doing in-depth research.

Finally, for teachers and students looking for a little variety in their study of the Bill of Rights, this site offers some interactive games. While the “Life Without the Bill of Rights?” and “Constitution Duel Quiz” games could be good for lesson introduction or class discussion, the “Madison’s Notes are Missing” game offers an opportunity for more in-depth student inquiry and requires interaction beyond just the click of a mouse.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Seth Swihart wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

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Constitutional Convention I: Debating the Virginia Plan

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Professor Gordon Lloyd looks at the Constitutional Convention and the debate over what form the new government and its constitution should take. He examines the Virginia Plan, the revised Virginia Plan, the New Jersey Plan, and the Hamilton Proposal.

To listen to this lecture, scroll to session four, and select the RealAudio text or image in the gray bar to the left of the main body text.

The Bill of Rights

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Jack Rakove of Stanford University examines the creation and significance of the Bill of Rights, arguing that it is perhaps not as significant as popularly believed.

To listen to this lecture, select "The Bill of Rights" under "Listen to Dr. Rakove's lectures."

iCivics

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iCivics teaches students civics by way of online casual gaming. Don't write the site off because it consists primarily of games. Most of them are actually both entertaining and educational.

Games are divided into sections—Citizen Participation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Budgeting, Separation of Powers, the Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch, with one to four games each. Games can also be sorted by overall time needed to play.

Try Cast Your Vote to learn to prioritize issues of importance to you and evaluate political candidates, Immigration Nation to learn reasons why people are and are not allowed into the country, Do I Have a Right? to review your amendments, Branches of Power to emphasize the relationships among the three branches of government, Executive Command to discover the responsibilities of the President, People's Pie to create a national budget, or Counties Work to manage county services. For an in-depth example, take a look at our Tech for Teachers entry on Do I Have a Right?.

Note that games include teacher's guides in the menu below the play area. Select Teachers' Tools, and look under Teacher's Files. Also under Teachers' Tools, you can search by your state name to find any standards directly related to the game in question.

Players can also earn points, and spend them on various causes such as Teens Against Domestic Abuse. The causes with the highest points each three months are awarded a monetary prize. This gives gaming point acquisition a real-life application.

In addition to games, the website offers curriculum units on budgeting, foundations of government, citizenship and participation, persuasive writing, and each of the three branches of government. These packages include lesson plans, appropriate iCivics games, and webquests. Webquests consist of thematic information linked to resources on external websites. You can also search for appropriate content by specific state standards, and/or register to create a class account.

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