American History I

1.  The Continental Association was a radical document because it profoundly raised the political stakes in 1774, even if it did not yet imagine any independence of the thirteen colonies.  Boycotts had been tried before, and had largely failed, but where and by whom would this boycott be enforced?  What would that mean for the everyday life of ordinary people in colonial American communities?

2.  The Tory Acts sought to suppress dissent in the colonies — i.e., to suppress those who disagreed with the unauthorized actions of unauthorized political entities like the Continental Congress and committees of safety, and with the violent actions of street mobs.  What was the difference in how such dissent was characterized earlier on, versus how it would be characterized later on?  What were the perceived restraints on stamping out dissent?  What could be done?  What shouldn’t be done?

3.  The Declaration of Independence should speak for itself.  Even if you are not a citizen of the United States, hopefully everyone can be grateful for the ideals it inserted into human history, as an ongoing, imperfect, elusive, ever unfulfilled experiment.  If you are a U.S. citizen, you cannot read it often enough, so that, some day in the future, these ideals might actually be fulfilled.  Either way, how did the Declaration aim to address itself to a wider world beyond the colonies and Britain?

4.  The Declaration sought to connect the “United States&redquo; to the wider world in a new way, decisively outside the British empire.  Meanwhile, to what degree and in what ways do you, today, feel either connected to or disconnected from what is happening in other parts of the world?