Unit 8: The American Dream

Lesson 8.2: Impact of opportunity and mobility

Unit 8: The American DreamSetting the StageIn this lesson, we will examine how opportunity and mobility impacted various groups within American society through Reconstruction .

Warm upList 5 things that you can do to achieve progress for yourself.

City on a HillThe phrase entered the American lexicon early in its history, in the Puritan John Winthrop's 1630 sermon "A Model of Christian Charity". Still aboard the ship Arbella, Winthrop admonished the future Massachusetts Bay colonists that their new community would be a "city upon a hill", watched by the world---which became the ideal the New England colonists placed upon their hilly capital city, Boston.Winthrop's sermon gave rise to the widespread belief in American folklore that the United States of America is God's country because metaphorically it is a Shining City upon a Hill, an early example of American exceptionalism.

ActivityBrainstorm with a partner ways in which the United States has been a City on a Hill, or model for other nations to strive toward. Be prepared to present your ideas to the class.

Lowell MillsFrancis Cabot Lowell invented the first factory system "where people and machines were all under one roof." For the first time in the United States (1821) these mills combined the textile processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, essentially eliminating the domestic system" system in favor of mass production of high-quality cloth. The workforce at these factories was three-quarters women.

Manifest DestinyWhat do you already know about Manifest Destiny? What was our God-given duty as Americans?What were some of the reasons for risking everything to settle west?

Primary source docPg 93113ImmigrantsWhat were some of the push factors that we learned about earlier in regard to immigration?What were some of the pull factors?Where did most of our early immigrants come from?

The California Gold Rush (49ers)The California Gold Rush (18481855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered. All told, the news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.The gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (as a reference to 1849), often faced substantial hardships on the trip. At first, the gold nuggets could be picked up off the ground. Later, gold was recovered from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning. More sophisticated methods were developed and later adopted elsewhere. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, increasing the proportion of gold companies to individual miners. Gold worth tens of billions of today's dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few. However, many returned home with little more than what they had started with.

Effects of the Gold RushThe effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. In 1849 a state constitution was written, a governor and legislature chosen and California became a state in 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850.

Homestead ActThe Homestead Acts were several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a "homestead", at little or no cost. In the United States, this originally consisted of grants totaling 160 acres of unappropriated federal land within the boundaries of the public land states. An extension of the Homestead Principle in law, the United States Homestead Acts were initially proposed as an expression of the "Free Soil" policy of Northerners who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own farms, as opposed to Southern slave-owners who could use groups of slaves to economic advantage.

Homestead Act- continuedThe first of the acts, the Homestead Act of 1862, was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government (including freed slaves and women); was 21 or older, or the head of a family; could file an application to claim a federal land grant. There was also a residency requirement. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 sought to address land ownership inequalities in the south during reconstruction.

Morrill ActThe Morrill Land-Grant Acts allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges, including the Morrill Act of 1862 The purpose of the land-grant colleges was:without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

ExodustersExodusters was a name given to African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, as part of the Exoduster Movement or Exodus of 1879. It was the first general migration of blacks following the Civil War.To escape the Ku Klux Klan, and the Jim Crow laws which continued to make them second-class citizens after Reconstruction, as many as forty thousand Exodusters left the South to settle in Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. In the 1880s, blacks bought more than 20,000 acres of land in Kansas, and several of the settlements made during this time still exist today.

reflectionIn your journal, explain how opportunity and mobility impacted various groups within American society through Reconstruction .