Lessons for the merchant era resources on Smithsonian American Enterprise exhibit http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/merchant-era
1. USF Stavros Center Presents:
Deborah Kozdras
Merchant Era: 1770s to 1850s
5E Lesson Presentation
NIGHT AT THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM
Tinyurl.com/usfstavrosresources
2. 5E Inquiry Lessons
• Inquiry/ Constructivist learning (c.f. Dewey, Piaget,
Vygotsky)
• Learning theory (constructivist) vs teaching
theory (behaviorist)
– Students explore
– Teacher guides students toward answers
– Students explain and teacher listens and prods
(Vygotsky Double Stimulation)
3. 5E CSI
5E CSI
Content: Big Idea
Standards:
Investigation:
ENGAGEMENT
Capture student interest:
Questions students should ask after engagement:
EXPLORATION and ENCULTURATION
Describe what hands-on/minds-on activities students will be doing.
List “big idea” conceptual questions to focus exploration.
EXPLANATION (show and tell)
Student explanations should precede teacher formal questions.
What questions or techniques will the teacher use to help students
connect their exploration to the concept under examination?
List higher order thinking questions which teachers will use to solicit
student explanations and help them to justify their explanations.
ELABORATION
How will student develop a more sophisticated understanding?
What vocabulary will be used and connected?
How is this knowledge applied in our daily lives?
EVALUATION
How will students demonstrate understanding?
What is your content big idea?
What are your focus standards?
Plan the investigation:
• student centered
• Inquiry learning
• Teacher guided
4. Merchant Era Lesson
5E CSI
Content: Big Idea From Trade to a Market Economy
Standards:
SS.8.E.1.1 Examine motivating economic factors that influenced the development of the United States economy over
time including scarcity, supply and demand, opportunity costs, incentives, profits, and entrepreneurial aspects.
SS.8.E.2.1 Analyze contributions of entrepreneurs, inventors, and other key individuals from various gender, social, and
ethnic backgrounds in the development of the United States economy.
SS.8.E.2.2 Explain the economic impact of government policies.
SS.8.E.2.3 Assess the role of Africans and other minority groups in the economic development of the United States.
SS.8.A.2.4 Identify the impact of key colonial figures on the economic, political, and social development of the colonies.
Investigation:
• Engagement
• Exploration and enculturation
• Explanation (show and tell)
• Elaboration
• Evaluation
5. During Investigation, Use Historical
Literacy
• SS.8.A.1.1 Provide supporting details for an answer from text, interview
for oral history, check validity of information from research/text, and
identify strong vs. weak arguments.
• SS.8.A.1.2 Analyze charts, graphs, maps, photographs and timelines;
analyze political cartoons; determine cause and effect.
• SS.8.A.1.3 Analyze current events relevant to American History topics
through a variety of electronic and print media resources.
• SS.8.A.1.4 Differentiate fact from opinion, utilize appropriate historical
research and fiction/nonfiction support materials.
• SS.8.A.1.5 Identify, within both primary and secondary sources, the
author, audience, format, and purpose of significant historical documents.
• SS.8.A.1.6 Compare interpretations of key events and issues throughout
American History.
• SS.8.A.1.7 View historic events through the eyes of those who were there
as shown in their art, writings, music, and artifacts.
6. Merchant Era Lesson: Engage:
• Lewis and Clark Night at the Museum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULAdMx
4jeUE
• Asking questions about trade.
• How did they buy a bus ticket?
• How did people buy things before we had
money?
• How do we buy things today?
7. Engage/Enculturatehttp://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-
exhibition/merchant-era
"View on the Erie Canal," by John William Hull, 1829: In the Merchant Era, abundant land and vast natural
resources fueled economic opportunities. Most people lived in rural places and worked as farmers and
artisans. Government encouraged agriculture, industry, transportation, and global trade. Moving from
bartering to a market revolution affected enslaved and free people, changing relationships between buyers
and sellers. It replaced face-to-face bargaining with less personal business.
8. Explore the Market Revolution: How did the
economy work for different people?
http://amhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise/market-revolution/
9. Explain: How did buyers and seller
• SS.8.E.1.1 Examine motivating economic factors that
influenced the development of the United States economy
over time including scarcity, supply and demand,
opportunity costs, incentives, profits, and entrepreneurial
aspects.
• SS.8.E.2.1 Analyze contributions of entrepreneurs,
inventors, and other key individuals from various gender,
social, and ethnic backgrounds in the development of the
United States economy.
• SS.8.E.2.2 Explain the economic impact of government
policies.
• SS.8.E.2.3 Assess the role of Africans and other minority
groups in the economic development of the United States.
10. Elaborate/Extend: Consider
the ideas of key government
individuals. How did
http://americanhistor
y.si.edu/american-
enterprise-
exhibition/merchant-
era
President:
George Washington
Secretary of State:
Thomas Jefferson
Secretary of Treasury:
Alexander Hamilton
11. Explore: The ideas of
different founders
http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-
exhibition/merchant-era
President George Washington
believed the new nation should
aggressively pursue economic
growth and trade.
“I indulge a fond, perhaps an
enthusiastic idea…that the
subjects of ambition and causes
for hostility are daily
diminishing…that the period is not
very remote, when the benefits of
a liberal and free commerce
will…succeed to the devastations
and horrors of war."
12. Explore:
The ideas of different
founders
http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/merchant-era
Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson thought that the
country’s future lay in
farming, not factory work.
“Those who labour in the
earth are the chosen people
of God.... While we have land
to labour then, let us never
wish to see our citizens
occupied at a workbench.”
13. Explore: The ideas of
different founders
Secretary of the Treasury
Alexander Hamilton believed
that the United States should
establish a balanced economy
based on industry.
“Manufacturing establishments
not only occasion a positive
augmentation of the produce
and revenue of the
society…they contribute
essentially to rendering them
greater than they could possibly
be, without such
establishments.”
http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/merchant-era
14. Elaborate/Extend: Use a chart to explain how
the events you explored related to these ideas
George Washington::
Economic growth and
trade.
Thomas Jefferson: Farming
not factory work
Alexander Hamilton:
Balanced economy based
on industry
http://amhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise/market-revolution/
15. Evaluate
• Which founders idea do you most agree with? Why? Use
evidence from the texts.
• What are the impact of the founder’s ideas on enterprise
during the era? What are economic, social political etc.
• Explain in terms of motivating economic factors that
influenced the development of the United States economy
over time including scarcity, supply and demand,
opportunity costs, incentives, profits, and entrepreneurial
aspects.
• What were some of the issues that may have influenced
the civil war? What were some of the issues? What were
some of the inequities?
16. Building an Argument
Here are my reasons!
1. _________________
_________________
_________________
2. _________________
_________________
_________________
3. _________________
_________________
_________________
You could argue that…
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
. . .but here is the
weakness . . .
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
Here is what I think . . .
Evidence to back up my reasons
Strong Finish!
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
17. Merchant’s Role Lesson5E CSI
Content: Big Idea How did the market work?
Standards:
• SS.5.A.1.1 Use primary and secondary sources to understand history.
• SS.5.A.4.4 Demonstrate an understanding of political, economic, and social aspects of daily colonial life in
the thirteen colonies.
• SS.5.E.1.1 Identify how trade promoted economic growth in North America from pre-Columbian times to
1850.
• SS.5.E.1.2 Describe a market economy, and give examples of how the colonial and early American
economy exhibited these characteristics.
Investigation:
• Engagement
• Exploration and enculturation
• Explanation (show and tell)
• Elaboration
• Evaluation
18. Merchant Era Lesson: Engage:
• Lewis and Clark Night at the Museum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULAdMx
4jeUE
• Asking questions about trade.
• How did they buy a bus ticket?
• How did people buy things before we had
money?
• How do we buy things today?
19. Merchant’s Role:
Explore/Encultura
te
The market
revolution
depended on
merchants. In their
ledgers, they
recorded complex
dealings about
goods from near
home and across
the oceans.
Farmers and
artisans paid on
credit or bartered
with their labor or
produce; few paid
in hard currency.
21. Explain
• How did the market work?
• Who were the sellers?
• Who were the consumers?
• Who were the producers?
• What goods and services did they want?
• Where were the goods made?
22. Elaborate
Use the leger to further
explain the relationship
and how the market
worked. Discuss how the
market works today.
How do we buy goods?
What about services?
How did services play
into this early market
economy?
http://amhistory.si.edu/american-
enterprise/merchant-ledger/
23. EvaluateCompare and contrast
how the market
(buyers, sellers,
goods, services,
supply, demand,
trade, scarcity, etc.)
worked then and
now.
Look at some flyers.
Create a leger and
make a compare and
contrast. How did
people pay for things
then and now? How
do we pay for things
now?
http://www.tampabay.com/circulars/
24. Manifest Destiny Lesson5E CSI
Content: Big Idea How did the market work?
Standards:
• SS.5.A.6.2 Identify roles and contributions of significant people during the period of westward expansion.
• SS.5.A.6.7 Discuss the concept of Manifest Destiny.
• SS.5.A.6.6 Explain how westward expansion affected Native Americans.
• SS.5.A.6.9 Describe the hardships of settlers along the overland trails to the west.
• SS.8.E.1.1 Examine motivating economic factors that influenced the development of the United States economy over time
including scarcity, supply and demand, opportunity costs, incentives, profits, and entrepreneurial aspects.
• SS.8.E.2.2 Explain the economic impact of government policies.
• SS.8.A.4.3 Examine the experiences and perspectives of significant individuals and groups during this era of American
History.
• SS.8.A.4.4 Discuss the impact of westward expansion on cultural practices and migration patterns of Native American and
African slave populations.
Investigation:
• Engagement
• Exploration and enculturation
• Explanation (show and tell)
• Elaboration
• Evaluation
25. Manifest Destiny Engage
• Show Manifest Destiny clip from Night at the
Museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
zl3_Q_FK450
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl3_Q_FK450
27. Explore: Trade in Grabbing Land
http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/merchant-era/grabbing-land
28. Explain:
What you discover in
Grabbing Land
How did the groups
participate in trade?
What goods did they
trade? What services
did they trade?
How did they
participate in land
trade?
How did the land
satisfy the needs of
the Native Americans
who lived there?
What were the wants
of the settlers?
30. Evaluate: Manifest Destiny vs Grabbing Land
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/compare-contrast-30066.html
31. Lewis and Clark
1804:
QR and Nickel Activity
Westward journey nickel
series
https://www.usmint.gov/kids/
teachers/lessonPlans/pdf/wjn
sResourceGuide.pdf
Describe each nickel and tell
why the images were
important to the expedition.
For more primary sources:
http://huntington.org/upload
edFiles/Files/PDFs/LHTHLewis
Clark.pdf
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
lewisandclark/
32. Economic Implications of Lewis and
Clark
• Lewis and
Clark pg 16 http://anthropology.si.edu/outrea
ch/anthnote/anthronotes_2006spring.pdf
• If you were Lewis and Clark, what are five
essential supplies you would request before
leaving on your expedition?
33. Economic Implications of Lewis and
Clark
“Lewis purchased about 200 different items for the
expedition, including 3500 doses of sweat inducers, 1100
doses of emetic, 50 dozen of Dr. Rush’s pills known as
“thunder clappers,” 30 gallons of liquor, 130 rolls of
pigtail tobacco, 193 pounds of portable soup, 500 gun
flints, 6 papers of ink powder, 176 pounds of gunpowder
packed in 52 lead canisters, plus 420 pounds of sheet lead
for bullets that the soldiers would need. For the Indians
they would meet, Lewis obtained, among other things he
thought would make nice presents and trade items, 33
pounds of beads of assorted colors, 4600 sewing needles,
144 small scissors, 10 pounds of sewing thread, 12 dozen
pocket mirrors, and 288 knives.”
Top of page 19
"View on the Erie Canal," by John William Hull, 1829
In the Merchant Era, abundant land and vast natural resources fueled economic opportunities. Most people lived in rural places and worked as farmers and artisans. Government encouraged agriculture, industry, transportation, and global trade. A market revolution affected enslaved and free people, transforming relationships between buyers and sellers and replacing face-to-face bargaining with less personal business.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/merchant-era
http://collections.glasgowmuseums.com/starobject.html?oid=203710&img=1
Oil painting, 'Portrait of a Glasgow woman shopkeeper', early 19th century
Not all businesses in Glasgow during the Georgian period were run by men as this portrait of a Glasgow woman shopkeeper shows. The Glasgow Post Office directories and letters of the period record that women ran businesses. She has sugar and lemons for sale, two of Glasgow punch ingredients along with rum. The sugar is in cones and wrapped in paper. On the shelf behind there is a strong box which could be a friendly association box. She is counting out coins or tokens. Shops of this period struck their own tokens for payment of goods.
Westward Movement
Americans have always looked westward. As the coastal plains filled, colonists arriving from Europe sought unclaimed land in the backcountry of each colony. After the French and Indian War, settlers crossed the Appalachians and entered the Tennessee and Ohio River Basins. After the American Revolution, settlers began to fill the Ohio Valley and moved out into western Georgia and Alabama. The conclusion of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of America’s land holdings and brought new opportunities to move westward into the Mississippi River Valley. Florida, the last piece of foreign held territory in the east was acquired in 1819 from Spain. By 1850, Americans had settled California, Oregon and Washington. The process of settlement took 150 years to reach the Appalachians, 50 years to reach the Mississippi and another 30 years to settle the Pacific states. In 230 years, Americans had come to dominate the continent. Americans believed such rapid expansion must have been a result of divine favor referred to as Manifest Destiny.
Manifest Destiny was a phrase coined to describe the belief that America was to expand and settle the entire continent of North America. The phrase originated in 1845 when John L. O’Sullivan, a newspaper editor, wrote that it was America’s "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
The center of population growth in the years after the War of 1812 was in future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and northern Kentucky. In this region three factors encouraged families in the eastern states to move into the Midwest. First, Native Americans were removed from the region. Second, land speculators had acquired large tracts of land and were eager to sell. Third, as the national infrastructure moved westward it was easier to migrate west. Although interest rates on land were high, so were grain prices throughout the 1830’s and 1840’s. Fertile soil and the development of better plows and harvesters allowing farmers large crops yields and increasing the allure of westward expansion.
use this image early on in my western history classes for several reasons. First, even students with little experience in talking about visual images find it easy to talk about what they see here. Second, students quickly grasp that although the painting does not convey a realistic representation of actual events, it nonetheless expresses a powerful historical idea about the meaning of America’s westward expansion. This sparks a discussion about the ways in which ideas—whether grounded in material fact or not—can both reflect and shape human actions. Finally, after a discussion of the larger cultural ideas embodied in this image, we move to a discussion of Frederick Jackson Turner’s celebrated 1893 essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Students quickly perceive that while Turner had a way with words, his argument was not wholly original. He distilled ideas already present in American popular thought and many of them are present in this painting, painted some two decades earlier.
As students begin to describe what they see, they quickly realize that they’re looking at a kind of historical encyclopedia of transportation technologies. The simple Indian travois precedes the covered wagon and the pony express, the overland stage and the three railroad lines. The static painting thus conveys a vivid sense of the passage of time as well as of the inevitability of technological progress. The groups of human figures, read from left to right, convey much the same idea. Indians precede Euro-American prospectors, who in turn come before the farmers and settlers. The idea of progress coming from the East to the West, and the notion that the frontier would be developed by sequential waves of people (here and in Turner’s configuration, always men) was deeply rooted in American thought.
Then, of course, there is that “beautiful and charming female,” as Crofutt described her, whose diaphanous gown somehow remains attached to her body without the aid of velcro or safety pins. On her head she bears what Crofutt called “the Star of Empire.” And lest viewers still not understand her role in this vision of American destiny, he explains: “In her right hand she carries a book—common school—the emblem of education and the testimonial of our national enlightenment, while with the left hand she unfolds and stretches the slender wires of the telegraph, that are to flash intelligence throughout the land.” The Indians flee from progress, unable to adjust to the shifting tides of history. The painting hints at the past, lays out a fantastic version of an evolving present, and finally lays out a vision of the future. A static picture conveys a dynamic story.
The ideas embodied in this painting not only suggest the broad sources for Turner’s essay about the importance of the frontier in American life, they suggest that his essay reached an audience for whom these ideas were already familiar. Students often imagine the issues raised by visual images to be peripheral to the more central questions raised by literary sources. The Gast painting, however, allows one to demonstrate the ways in which painters, too, could engage large historical questions, cultural stereotypes and political ideas, by using a visual vocabulary that viewers found both familiar and persuasive.
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Ohio Valley was being settled quickly. Jefferson had sensed that the destiny of the nation was tied to the Mississippi River Valley. Jefferson worried that the regional difficulty of communicating and trading with east coast could precipitate secession from the United States. When Jefferson purchased Louisiana, these fears were eased. No one was exactly sure what lay between St. Louis and the Pacific. Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore Louisiana and the western lands all the way to the Pacific Ocean. On their 16-month expedition, Lewis and Clark charted the trails west, mapped rivers and mountain ranges, wrote descriptions and collected samples of unfamiliar animals and plants, and recorded facts and figures about the various Native American tribes and customs west of the Mississippi River. Most significantly, Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean and established a legal claim to the region along the Columbia River. This claim would allow for the future expansion of the United States to the Pacific Ocean.
