The United States: An Open Ended History is a free online history textbook adapted and expanded upon from open sources.  Its chapters are designed to address most state standards, splitting the difference between overarching themes, concise summary, and the kinds of vivid, personal details that make history memorable to the average student.  Please use and share freely – to supplement or replace what you have at hand.

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One – A Not So-Distant Past: Native America (Until 1600)

1. North America’s First People
2. The Pristine Myth: How Native Americans Shaped Their World
3. A Collision of Worlds: The Legacy of Columbus

Two – A New World: Colonial America (1600 – 1754)

1. Jamestown: English Settlers in the Land of the Powhatan
2. Massachusetts: Church and State in the Land of the Wampanoag
3. An Overview of the English Colonies in America
4. The Origins of Servitude and Slavery in Colonial America

Three – Common Sense and Independence: The Revolutionary Era (1754 – 1788)

1. Join, or Die: The French and Indian War
2. Agitation, Taxation, and Representation by Other Means
3. The Shot Heard Round the World, Common Sense, and Independence
4. The Revolutionary War: With a Little Help from our Friends
5. A New Nation in Crisis: Shays Rebellion and the U.S. Under the Articles
6. The Constitution: A Second Draft of American Democracy

Four – A More Perfect Union: The Early Republic (1788-1824)

1. President Washington and the Origins of Party Politics
2. Adams, Jefferson, and Competing Visions for the New Republic
3. Foreign Adventures in the New Republic
4. The Era of Good Feelings and Others Who Were Not So Lucky

Five – New Frontiers: Economic, Social, and Westward Expansion (1824-1850)

1. Andrew Jackson, For and Against the Common Man
2. I Will Not Retreat a Single Inch: Reformers Make Themselves Heard
3. Manifest Destiny, Westward Expansion, and the Conquest of Mexico

Six – The Gathering Storm: Sectionalism and a Nation in Crisis (1850-1865)

1. Sectionalism in the Fractured 1850s
2. A Nation Divided Against Itself
3. To Break Our Bonds of Affection: The Coming of the Civil War
4. Gettysburg to Appomattox and Beyond: A New Birth of Freedom

Appendix – Student Activities

• Primary Source Analysis: Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors
• Activity: New World Colonist Recruitment Infomercials
• Primary Source Analysis: The Evolution of the Virginia Laws of Servitude and Slavery (1643-1691)
• Activity/Note Taking Alternative: Massachusetts Bay Comix
• Activity/Note Taking Alternative: “Why did the colonists declare independence?” Children’s Book
• Activity: American Revolutionary War Screenplays
• Activity: “How I Spent my Voyage of Discovery” with Lewis and Clark
• Activity: Build Your Own American System
• Primary Source Analysis: Comparing Slavery and Factory Life
• Activity: A Eulogy for Andrew Jackson
• Activity: Social Reform Movements – Who Should Be the New Face of the $20 Bill?
• Activity: The Real Oregon Trail
• Supplemental Reading: Conquest or Westward Expansion?: Native Americans and the Stories We Tell
• Activity: Lobbying for the Compromise of 1850
• Primary Source Analysis: The Dead of Antietam – Photography in the Civil War
• Primary Source Analysis: Were the Freedmen Really Free?

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