First Semester History Review Notes

Hey guys, welcome back to History with Mrs. Lee. I thought that I had some videos from last year ready to go for this, and unfortunately I could not locate them. But that's okay, this gives me a chance to refine and make sure that we have everything we need to know for our STAR test this Thursday. So, I'm going to take just the first semester topics for this video, and I've tried to organize it out in a way that will make sense for you. But I just want to give you a reminder that on Thursday, when you get that test booklet, I want you to do a brain dump anywhere that you can find a clean spot in the booklet. And I want you to put yourself back into our classroom and take it wall by wall. So think about 13 colonies on the glass window, and then American Revolution in the front left section of the room, AOC and Constitution in the right side front of the room. Then you had First Five. presidents on the first window, Jackson in the middle, industrial revolution and reform on the second window, then we had manifest destiny towards the back corner, and then on the back wall, civil war and reconstruction. So just do that brain dump, put yourself back inside our classroom to help you think about what was important that you need to remember for your test, and then just cap those questions and try your best. All right, so I want to start out with our map. I always think of things through our American history map. And so remember PGA, I want to go golfing by beautiful oceans. So P, Pacific Ocean, G, Gulf of Mexico, and then A for Atlantic Ocean. We have our Rocky Mountains on the west side, our Appalachian Mountains on the eastern side. We have the Mississippi River down the middle, Missouri River branches out to the west, the Ohio River branches out to the east. and then we have our five Great Lakes up here closer to Canada. All right, so let's go ahead and let's get started with our 13 colonies. We had three colonial regions. We studied in the blue the New England colonies, and in the New England colonies, because they had poor soil but a lot of harbors, natural harbors, we see people making a lot of money through fishing, shipping, trading, whaling, etc. We colored the middle colonies yellow because they were known as the breadbasket, and so they grew a lot of grain. And then in the southern colonies, we colored them green because they have very fertile soil to grow lots of cash crops, including tobacco. All right, we're going to go ahead and start out with our first successful colony, and that is our hot date of 1607 Jamestown, Virginia. Remember that colonists were coming to Jamestown in hopes of finding gold and getting rich. They did not find gold, but they do become rich off of the cash crops. Jamestown, because it grows to be such a large community, ends up creating the House of Burgesses in 1619, and this is going to be our first representative government in the colonies. Next up, in 1620, when the Pilgrims travel over to the New England colonies, they end up writing the Mayflower Compact, and that is the first self- government in America. Now, the pilgrims and Puritans were here for religious freedom, and they are going to have to govern themselves because they ended up north instead of here down in Jamestown. So a problem is that we are so far away from the king across the Atlantic Ocean that we experience salutary neglect. The king's not paying any attention to us, and the distance is just way too far. So we are going to be responsible for the rest of the world. for creating our own government, self-governments and representative governments. In the New England colonies, you also see a lot of town hall meetings. In the New England colonies, we also have the creation of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut by Thomas Hooker. This is the first written constitution in the New World. It will also expand voting rights to people who are not members of the church. And some of these documents were also inspired by really... old documents like the Magna Carta all the way back from 1215 in England, and that basically limited the powers of the king and gave more rights to the people, as well as the English Bill of Rights. And the English Bill of Rights, we call it the Magna Carta 2.0 because it further limited the powers of the king and gave more rights to the people. Also, the First Great Awakening is a religious movement in the 13 colonies that basically called on people to be more religious. but to also use their voice in their government. So having that self and representative government. Now, in the middle colonies, one of the... The important leaders there was William Penn. He was the leader of the Quakers. And it's important to remember that the Quakers were known for practicing tolerance, and they are the first group of abolitionists in American history. They call to end slavery. It does not match with their religious beliefs. Now, we talked about salutary neglect, but another issue that we experience during the 13 colonies'time period is mercantilism. The king has set up these colonies because he is hoping to get rich. Mercantilism is basically the mother country gets rich by taking all the resources of the colonies and then forcing the colonists to buy back the manufactured goods. Also during this time period, speaking about economies, we have the triangle trade, and that is going to bring slaves from Africa, mostly to the southern colonies, to work on the large plantations. helping to harvest cash crops. Also in the south we note the colony of Georgia because this was created for debtors from England and they were put in Georgia as a buffer colony to Spanish Florida. And then we also had the colony in the south called Maryland and that was established for religious freedom for Catholics. We always think about Catholics, Mary. and their leader was Lord Baltimore. So that Christianity, Mary, and Lord kind of all go together as memory tricks. All right, so moving on from the 13 colonies, we're going to experience our first war, and that is the French and Indian War. This is going to be a war fought over the land in the Ohio River Valley, and this is also when Ben Franklin creates his cartoon with the snake called Join or Die. He was calling on colonists. to join together so that we did not end up losing to the French and Indians and becoming like slaves to the French and Indians. Well, we end up winning the war with Britain's help. However, we're not so happy because England passes the Proclamation Act, and that basically tells colonists to stop moving west of the Appalachian Mountains. The British were not willing to help us. if we got into any more trouble with the Indians that were still living in this territory. So that really angers the colonists that, hey, we had won this war, now you're still not going to let us move west. Let me refocus this, sorry. There we go. And a huge problem from the French and Indian War is that England is now in debt. Now because England is in debt, that's going to lead to... Laws like the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Tea Act. They're going to pass these taxes so that they can help pay off the debts from the French and Indian War. But colonists are going to say, hey, why are we paying taxes? No taxation without representation. You don't let us have a voice in the parliament. England goes on to also pass laws like the Quartering Act, which forced Americans to keep British soldiers in their homes. They also pass the Townshend Acts, which includes writs of assistance. And this basically allows British soldiers to search your home whenever they feel like they think you have smuggled goods. Now, the Quartering Act, writs of assistance, this is going to lead to grievances that we have with the king. And those will later be addressed in the Declaration of Independence, but also in our Bill of Rights. All right, now I want to go to the town of Boston in the New England. town of Boston in the colony of Massachusetts and we have the Boston Massacre. In the Boston Massacre, you remember Crispus Attucks is the first person killed and basically it's a small fight between American colonists and British soldiers. British soldiers had killed some colonists and so people take this and use it as propaganda to try to convince others to become patriots and go against the British. We also see the event of the Boston Tea Party, and this is where Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty protest group throw tea off of the boats into the Boston Harbor. Now, we are going to classify that as civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is when you break a law because you think it is unfair or unjust. And the Boston Tea Party, though, is going to cause great problems for the colonists because the British will pass the Intolerable Acts. And the Intolerable Acts will close the port of Boston and make the colonists repay for all the tea that was destroyed. This leads to even greater tension, which then leads to the first battles of the American Revolution, which is the Battles of Lexington and Concord. also known as the shot heard around the world. All right, now we get to 1776, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Independence Hall, we have Thomas Jefferson, who was inspired by John Locke, to write the Declaration of Independence, and that includes lots of grievances that we have with England. We're telling England why we want to break up with them, but most importantly, it notes that we have three unalienable rights. Unalienable rights are rights that... you are born with as a human. It does not matter what country you're from. Any human has these rights, and they cannot be taken away by any government. And those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson was inspired by John Locke to write this Declaration of Independence. All right, then we get to our next event, which was the Battle of Saratoga. Saratoga is going to be known as the turning point point of the American Revolution because the American colonists finally start winning some major battles, and we convince France to be our ally. Most notably, we get Marquis de Lafayette to come over and help train troops. All right, then we get to the winter at Valley Forge, and Valley Forge is significant because this is a really tough time for Washington and his troops, but they come out of this harsh winter as a stronger fighting force. In large part, part thanks to Marquis de Lafayette. After Valley Forge, we have Yorktown, and this is where we get the British to finally surrender. But Americans do not officially get their independence until we get to the Treaty of Paris, and that is S-T-O-P, Signed Treaty of Paris. In this treaty, Americans officially gain their independence, but they also will gain land. West of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. Now remember, a memory trick for those events is L, Lexington and Concord, S, Saratoga, V, Valley Forge, Y, Yorktown, Stop, sign Treaty of Paris. Now, after the Treaty of Paris, we have our own government. And the first government that we create is the Articles of Confederation. Okay, now I'm going to pause right there and I just want to review some of our very important people of the American Revolution that could pop up on your tests. Okay, we have King George III from England. We have George Washington, the leader of the American troops, his helper from France, Marquis de Lafayette. One of our allies from Spain, Bernardo de Galvez, he's going to be helpful here in the Gulf of Mexico and he's going to set up ships. To blockade the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River to make sure that no British troops are able to travel up this way to fight the Americans. My best friend forever, Haim Solomon, he is going to give all of his money to help the Patriot cause. We have Thomas Paine, who writes Common Sense to try to convince people to be patriots. And we have his female counterpart, Mercy Otis Warren, who also writes plays and pamphlets to convince people to be patriots. We have Sam Adams, the leader of the Sons of Liberty. We have Ben Franklin, who encourages unity during the war and encourages people to be patriots. James Armistead was a spy who helped the Americans. John Paul Jones, who is the father of the American Navy. Crispus Attucks, the first man killed during the Boston Massacre. Abigail Adams, John Adams'wife, who encourages John to remember the ladies. Wentworth Cheswell is very similar to Paul Revere, except he goes north, so his nickname is Went North Cheswell, to tell people the British are coming. And then Patrick Henry, who is a fiery speaker, and he encourages us to all sign the Declaration of Independence, give me liberty or give me death. Later on, he'll go on to also be an outspoken anti-Federalist. Alright, so let's get back into that Articles of Confederation, and I ran out of space up here, so let's go ahead and move up this way. And the Articles of Confederation is going to have many weaknesses, and we use the hand to help remember the weaknesses. The most important weakness to remember is that the AOC creates a very weak central government. The ring finger would be to represent that there is not a lot of money. We're in huge debt after the American Revolution. The middle finger, there's lots of boundary and border disputes. The pointer finger. All of the states are blaming each other for the problems in our country, and then the thumbs down, we don't get any respect from foreign countries. Now, a strength of the AOC that is sometimes discussed is that this land up here by the Great Lakes, this is the Northwest Territory, and in the AOC we... We have the Northwest Ordinance, and this helps us organize any new lands that want to become states in the Union. So if you have 60,000 people, you can apply to become a state in the Union. All right, now back, though, to our weaknesses. We're going to have an event called Shays'Rebellion. And basically, after the American Revolution, the states had these high taxes, and so a lot of farmers were getting their lands taken away from them because they could not apply. afford to pay the taxes. And so Daniel Shays leads a bunch of farmers and angry people about taxes, and nobody's really there to stop them and tell them, hey, you can't shoot people and kill people just because you don't want to pay taxes. And so with Shays'Rebellion, people in the country finally start to see that the AOC is just too weak. This is not working, and it needs to be replaced. So we go back to Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and we're going to have the Constitutional Convention. At the Constitutional Convention, we're going to have large states and small states meet. We're going to have northern states and southern states meet. Now, in the Great Compromise, this is going to be a compromise between big states and small states, Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan. Instead of having just one house in our Congress, we're going to have two houses, and that's called bicameral. And in this Congress... One house will be based on population, so that makes large states happy, and that's called your House of Representatives. And then we'll have a house called the Senate, and that is based on equal representation, and that will make your small states happy. Then, in regards to northern states and southern states, southern states have slaves, and they feel like they should get to count slaves towards their population to help with their House of Representatives numbers. And northern states feel like states with slaves should be taxed more. So we get the three-fifths compromise, that slaves are going to count as three-fifths of a person, or for every five slaves, they will count as three people towards the population. So three-fifths compromise deals with the issue of slavery and how slaves would count towards the population issue and taxation issue. Now, the Constitution, written by James Madison, sounds great, but you can't just pass it all in one day, and so you have to get it ratified by the states. This ends up leading to two different groups called Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Federalists supported a strong federal government, while Anti-Federalists were very worried about having a strong federal government. They felt like states should be stronger, and they also would not ratify the Constitution until they got a Bill of Rights. Their leader is going to be George Mason, and he will be outspoken about getting rights for the people. And the Federalists were led by... by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. All right, now, they come to an agreement, and we get a Bill of Rights added. So let's go ahead and talk about the parts of the Constitution. Flip rocks is our memory trick to remember the seven principles of the Constitution. F stands for federalism, and that means the federal and state governments share powers. L stands for limited government, all people. Must follow the laws, even if you're the president or a member of Congress or part of the Supreme Court. I stands for individual rights, and that is best shown in our Bill of Rights that we're going to get to in just a second. P stands for popular sovereignty, and that is best seen by the first three words of our Constitution. We the people. We the people are in charge of our government. R stands for republicanism, and that is best shown by people voting. C stands for checks and balances. So our three branches, none of them can become too powerful. So an example of a check or balance would be that the president can veto a law passed by Congress or that the Supreme Court could declare a law unconstitutional. And then the S stands for separation of powers. We have three branches of government. Legislative is in charge of making the law, also known as Congress. Executive, also known as president. president carries out the law or enforces laws and then J judicial that is also known as the Supreme Court and they judge or evaluate laws to determine if they follow the Constitution okay now probably our favorite part of the Constitution is our Bill of Rights but in order to get amendments to the Constitution let's make sure that we understand the process to amend the Constitution you know what I'm going to go ahead and add this one so you're going to need two-thirds of both houses of Congress to suggest a change be made to the Constitution. And that's really hard to do. If you can make it through two-thirds of both houses, great. Now you can move on to step two. Then you need three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify this amendment to the Constitution. So it's not very easy to accomplish. But those first ten amendments were added right away after the Constitution was written in order to get those anti-federalists to agree to ratify the Constitution. So let's review your Bill of Rights because you usually have one or two questions on the test about the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, we call it WRAPS. This protects freedom of religion, assembly, press, petition, and speech. Number two is the right to bear arms. Number three is no quartering soldiers in times of peace. And number four is no search and seizure without a warrant. Okay, and so a lot of those, I'm thinking about the grievances from the 13 colonies time period when We're upset with England for sending troops over to our houses in the Quartering Act or being able to search our houses with the writs of assistance. So those are going to help with the grievances we had during the colonial times. The Fifth Amendment is the right to remain silent so you do not have to answer questions or make yourself part of the problem or give yourself away. And it is also sometimes going to be about getting your land taken away. The government can't just take your land away. They have to give you a fair market value for that. And then also that the government also has to protect rights of anybody who has been accused of a crime. All right, and then the Sixth Amendment, you have the right to a speedy public trial by jury. You also have the right to an attorney or a lawyer. The Seventh Amendment, you also have the right to a trial by jury for civil cases over $20. The Eighth Amendment, you have the right to no cruel and unusual punishments and no excessive fines or fees. The Ninth Amendment says that all people have rights, even if not explicitly listed in the Constitution, sometimes called rights not enumerated. And then number 10 is also linked to the principle of federalism. So any rights not taken by the federal government go to the people and the states. And then we'll get into 13, 14, 15 in our next video. Finally, we finished up our first semester by talking about citizenship. Remember that you're a citizen if you are born in the country. You're a citizen if either one of your parents are citizens of the country. Or you could apply for naturalization to become a citizen. But that... process involves you being over the age of 18, you have to live here for five years or longer legally, you have to speak English, pass a civics test, pledge an oath to the country and the constitution. And then the last thing we discussed were civic duties. So some of the things that we expect citizens to participate in would be like going and serving on a jury, paying your taxes, etc. All right, so I hope that was a good review for you of the very first semester of 8th grade American History. Study hard tonight and watch for my next video for this second semester. Thanks!

So, I'm going to take just the first semester topics for this video, and I've tried to organize it out in a way that will make sense for you. But I just want to give you a reminder that on Thursday, when you get that test booklet, I want you to do a brain dump anywhere that you can find a clean spot in the booklet. And I want you to put yourself back into our classroom and take it wall by wall. So think about 13 colonies on the glass window, and then American Revolution in the front left section of the room, AOC and Constitution in the right side front of the room. Then you had First Five.

presidents on the first window, Jackson in the middle, industrial revolution and reform on the second window, then we had manifest destiny towards the back corner, and then on the back wall, civil war and reconstruction. So just do that brain dump, put yourself back inside our classroom to help you think about what was important that you need to remember for your test, and then just cap those questions and try your best. All right, so I want to start out with our map. I always think of things through our American history map. And so remember PGA, I want to go golfing by beautiful oceans.

So P, Pacific Ocean, G, Gulf of Mexico, and then A for Atlantic Ocean. We have our Rocky Mountains on the west side, our Appalachian Mountains on the eastern side. We have the Mississippi River down the middle, Missouri River branches out to the west, the Ohio River branches out to the east.

and then we have our five Great Lakes up here closer to Canada. All right, so let's go ahead and let's get started with our 13 colonies. We had three colonial regions. We studied in the blue the New England colonies, and in the New England colonies, because they had poor soil but a lot of harbors, natural harbors, we see people making a lot of money through fishing, shipping, trading, whaling, etc.

We colored the middle colonies yellow because they were known as the breadbasket, and so they grew a lot of grain. And then in the southern colonies, we colored them green because they have very fertile soil to grow lots of cash crops, including tobacco. All right, we're going to go ahead and start out with our first successful colony, and that is our hot date of 1607 Jamestown, Virginia.

Remember that colonists were coming to Jamestown in hopes of finding gold and getting rich. They did not find gold, but they do become rich off of the cash crops. Jamestown, because it grows to be such a large community, ends up creating the House of Burgesses in 1619, and this is going to be our first representative government in the colonies. Next up, in 1620, when the Pilgrims travel over to the New England colonies, they end up writing the Mayflower Compact, and that is the first self- government in America.

Now, the pilgrims and Puritans were here for religious freedom, and they are going to have to govern themselves because they ended up north instead of here down in Jamestown. So a problem is that we are so far away from the king across the Atlantic Ocean that we experience salutary neglect. The king's not paying any attention to us, and the distance is just way too far. So we are going to be responsible for the rest of the world.

for creating our own government, self-governments and representative governments. In the New England colonies, you also see a lot of town hall meetings. In the New England colonies, we also have the creation of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut by Thomas Hooker.

This is the first written constitution in the New World. It will also expand voting rights to people who are not members of the church. And some of these documents were also inspired by really...

old documents like the Magna Carta all the way back from 1215 in England, and that basically limited the powers of the king and gave more rights to the people, as well as the English Bill of Rights. And the English Bill of Rights, we call it the Magna Carta 2.0 because it further limited the powers of the king and gave more rights to the people. Also, the First Great Awakening is a religious movement in the 13 colonies that basically called on people to be more religious.

but to also use their voice in their government. So having that self and representative government. Now, in the middle colonies, one of the... The important leaders there was William Penn. He was the leader of the Quakers.

And it's important to remember that the Quakers were known for practicing tolerance, and they are the first group of abolitionists in American history. They call to end slavery. It does not match with their religious beliefs. Now, we talked about salutary neglect, but another issue that we experience during the 13 colonies'time period is mercantilism. The king has set up these colonies because he is hoping to get rich.

Mercantilism is basically the mother country gets rich by taking all the resources of the colonies and then forcing the colonists to buy back the manufactured goods. Also during this time period, speaking about economies, we have the triangle trade, and that is going to bring slaves from Africa, mostly to the southern colonies, to work on the large plantations. helping to harvest cash crops. Also in the south we note the colony of Georgia because this was created for debtors from England and they were put in Georgia as a buffer colony to Spanish Florida.

And then we also had the colony in the south called Maryland and that was established for religious freedom for Catholics. We always think about Catholics, Mary. and their leader was Lord Baltimore.

So that Christianity, Mary, and Lord kind of all go together as memory tricks. All right, so moving on from the 13 colonies, we're going to experience our first war, and that is the French and Indian War. This is going to be a war fought over the land in the Ohio River Valley, and this is also when Ben Franklin creates his cartoon with the snake called Join or Die.

He was calling on colonists. to join together so that we did not end up losing to the French and Indians and becoming like slaves to the French and Indians. Well, we end up winning the war with Britain's help.

However, we're not so happy because England passes the Proclamation Act, and that basically tells colonists to stop moving west of the Appalachian Mountains. The British were not willing to help us. if we got into any more trouble with the Indians that were still living in this territory.

So that really angers the colonists that, hey, we had won this war, now you're still not going to let us move west. Let me refocus this, sorry. There we go. And a huge problem from the French and Indian War is that England is now in debt. Now because England is in debt, that's going to lead to...

Laws like the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Tea Act. They're going to pass these taxes so that they can help pay off the debts from the French and Indian War. But colonists are going to say, hey, why are we paying taxes? No taxation without representation.

You don't let us have a voice in the parliament. England goes on to also pass laws like the Quartering Act, which forced Americans to keep British soldiers in their homes. They also pass the Townshend Acts, which includes writs of assistance.

And this basically allows British soldiers to search your home whenever they feel like they think you have smuggled goods. Now, the Quartering Act, writs of assistance, this is going to lead to grievances that we have with the king. And those will later be addressed in the Declaration of Independence, but also in our Bill of Rights. All right, now I want to go to the town of Boston in the New England.

town of Boston in the colony of Massachusetts and we have the Boston Massacre. In the Boston Massacre, you remember Crispus Attucks is the first person killed and basically it's a small fight between American colonists and British soldiers. British soldiers had killed some colonists and so people take this and use it as propaganda to try to convince others to become patriots and go against the British. We also see the event of the Boston Tea Party, and this is where Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty protest group throw tea off of the boats into the Boston Harbor.

Now, we are going to classify that as civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is when you break a law because you think it is unfair or unjust. And the Boston Tea Party, though, is going to cause great problems for the colonists because the British will pass the Intolerable Acts. And the Intolerable Acts will close the port of Boston and make the colonists repay for all the tea that was destroyed.

This leads to even greater tension, which then leads to the first battles of the American Revolution, which is the Battles of Lexington and Concord. also known as the shot heard around the world. All right, now we get to 1776, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Independence Hall, we have Thomas Jefferson, who was inspired by John Locke, to write the Declaration of Independence, and that includes lots of grievances that we have with England. We're telling England why we want to break up with them, but most importantly, it notes that we have three unalienable rights.

Unalienable rights are rights that... you are born with as a human. It does not matter what country you're from.

Any human has these rights, and they cannot be taken away by any government. And those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson was inspired by John Locke to write this Declaration of Independence. All right, then we get to our next event, which was the Battle of Saratoga.

Saratoga is going to be known as the turning point point of the American Revolution because the American colonists finally start winning some major battles, and we convince France to be our ally. Most notably, we get Marquis de Lafayette to come over and help train troops. All right, then we get to the winter at Valley Forge, and Valley Forge is significant because this is a really tough time for Washington and his troops, but they come out of this harsh winter as a stronger fighting force.

In large part, part thanks to Marquis de Lafayette. After Valley Forge, we have Yorktown, and this is where we get the British to finally surrender. But Americans do not officially get their independence until we get to the Treaty of Paris, and that is S-T-O-P, Signed Treaty of Paris.

In this treaty, Americans officially gain their independence, but they also will gain land. West of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. Now remember, a memory trick for those events is L, Lexington and Concord, S, Saratoga, V, Valley Forge, Y, Yorktown, Stop, sign Treaty of Paris. Now, after the Treaty of Paris, we have our own government. And the first government that we create is the Articles of Confederation.

Okay, now I'm going to pause right there and I just want to review some of our very important people of the American Revolution that could pop up on your tests. Okay, we have King George III from England. We have George Washington, the leader of the American troops, his helper from France, Marquis de Lafayette.

One of our allies from Spain, Bernardo de Galvez, he's going to be helpful here in the Gulf of Mexico and he's going to set up ships. To blockade the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River to make sure that no British troops are able to travel up this way to fight the Americans. My best friend forever, Haim Solomon, he is going to give all of his money to help the Patriot cause. We have Thomas Paine, who writes Common Sense to try to convince people to be patriots.

And we have his female counterpart, Mercy Otis Warren, who also writes plays and pamphlets to convince people to be patriots. We have Sam Adams, the leader of the Sons of Liberty. We have Ben Franklin, who encourages unity during the war and encourages people to be patriots. James Armistead was a spy who helped the Americans. John Paul Jones, who is the father of the American Navy.

Crispus Attucks, the first man killed during the Boston Massacre. Abigail Adams, John Adams'wife, who encourages John to remember the ladies. Wentworth Cheswell is very similar to Paul Revere, except he goes north, so his nickname is Went North Cheswell, to tell people the British are coming.

And then Patrick Henry, who is a fiery speaker, and he encourages us to all sign the Declaration of Independence, give me liberty or give me death. Later on, he'll go on to also be an outspoken anti-Federalist. Alright, so let's get back into that Articles of Confederation, and I ran out of space up here, so let's go ahead and move up this way. And the Articles of Confederation is going to have many weaknesses, and we use the hand to help remember the weaknesses.

The most important weakness to remember is that the AOC creates a very weak central government. The ring finger would be to represent that there is not a lot of money. We're in huge debt after the American Revolution.

The middle finger, there's lots of boundary and border disputes. The pointer finger. All of the states are blaming each other for the problems in our country, and then the thumbs down, we don't get any respect from foreign countries.

Now, a strength of the AOC that is sometimes discussed is that this land up here by the Great Lakes, this is the Northwest Territory, and in the AOC we... We have the Northwest Ordinance, and this helps us organize any new lands that want to become states in the Union. So if you have 60,000 people, you can apply to become a state in the Union.

All right, now back, though, to our weaknesses. We're going to have an event called Shays'Rebellion. And basically, after the American Revolution, the states had these high taxes, and so a lot of farmers were getting their lands taken away from them because they could not apply. afford to pay the taxes.

And so Daniel Shays leads a bunch of farmers and angry people about taxes, and nobody's really there to stop them and tell them, hey, you can't shoot people and kill people just because you don't want to pay taxes. And so with Shays'Rebellion, people in the country finally start to see that the AOC is just too weak. This is not working, and it needs to be replaced.

So we go back to Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and we're going to have the Constitutional Convention. At the Constitutional Convention, we're going to have large states and small states meet. We're going to have northern states and southern states meet. Now, in the Great Compromise, this is going to be a compromise between big states and small states, Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan. Instead of having just one house in our Congress, we're going to have two houses, and that's called bicameral.

And in this Congress... One house will be based on population, so that makes large states happy, and that's called your House of Representatives. And then we'll have a house called the Senate, and that is based on equal representation, and that will make your small states happy.

Then, in regards to northern states and southern states, southern states have slaves, and they feel like they should get to count slaves towards their population to help with their House of Representatives numbers. And northern states feel like states with slaves should be taxed more. So we get the three-fifths compromise, that slaves are going to count as three-fifths of a person, or for every five slaves, they will count as three people towards the population.

So three-fifths compromise deals with the issue of slavery and how slaves would count towards the population issue and taxation issue. Now, the Constitution, written by James Madison, sounds great, but you can't just pass it all in one day, and so you have to get it ratified by the states. This ends up leading to two different groups called Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

Federalists supported a strong federal government, while Anti-Federalists were very worried about having a strong federal government. They felt like states should be stronger, and they also would not ratify the Constitution until they got a Bill of Rights. Their leader is going to be George Mason, and he will be outspoken about getting rights for the people.

And the Federalists were led by... by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. All right, now, they come to an agreement, and we get a Bill of Rights added.

So let's go ahead and talk about the parts of the Constitution. Flip rocks is our memory trick to remember the seven principles of the Constitution. F stands for federalism, and that means the federal and state governments share powers. L stands for limited government, all people. Must follow the laws, even if you're the president or a member of Congress or part of the Supreme Court.

I stands for individual rights, and that is best shown in our Bill of Rights that we're going to get to in just a second. P stands for popular sovereignty, and that is best seen by the first three words of our Constitution. We the people. We the people are in charge of our government.

R stands for republicanism, and that is best shown by people voting. C stands for checks and balances. So our three branches, none of them can become too powerful.

So an example of a check or balance would be that the president can veto a law passed by Congress or that the Supreme Court could declare a law unconstitutional. And then the S stands for separation of powers. We have three branches of government.

Legislative is in charge of making the law, also known as Congress. Executive, also known as president. president carries out the law or enforces laws and then J judicial that is also known as the Supreme Court and they judge or evaluate laws to determine if they follow the Constitution okay now probably our favorite part of the Constitution is our Bill of Rights but in order to get amendments to the Constitution let's make sure that we understand the process to amend the Constitution you know what I'm going to go ahead and add this one so you're going to need two-thirds of both houses of Congress to suggest a change be made to the Constitution. And that's really hard to do. If you can make it through two-thirds of both houses, great.

Now you can move on to step two. Then you need three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify this amendment to the Constitution. So it's not very easy to accomplish. But those first ten amendments were added right away after the Constitution was written in order to get those anti-federalists to agree to ratify the Constitution. So let's review your Bill of Rights because you usually have one or two questions on the test about the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment, we call it WRAPS. This protects freedom of religion, assembly, press, petition, and speech. Number two is the right to bear arms. Number three is no quartering soldiers in times of peace. And number four is no search and seizure without a warrant.

Okay, and so a lot of those, I'm thinking about the grievances from the 13 colonies time period when We're upset with England for sending troops over to our houses in the Quartering Act or being able to search our houses with the writs of assistance. So those are going to help with the grievances we had during the colonial times. The Fifth Amendment is the right to remain silent so you do not have to answer questions or make yourself part of the problem or give yourself away. And it is also sometimes going to be about getting your land taken away. The government can't just take your land away.

They have to give you a fair market value for that. And then also that the government also has to protect rights of anybody who has been accused of a crime. All right, and then the Sixth Amendment, you have the right to a speedy public trial by jury. You also have the right to an attorney or a lawyer.

The Seventh Amendment, you also have the right to a trial by jury for civil cases over $20. The Eighth Amendment, you have the right to no cruel and unusual punishments and no excessive fines or fees. The Ninth Amendment says that all people have rights, even if not explicitly listed in the Constitution, sometimes called rights not enumerated.

And then number 10 is also linked to the principle of federalism. So any rights not taken by the federal government go to the people and the states. And then we'll get into 13, 14, 15 in our next video. Finally, we finished up our first semester by talking about citizenship. Remember that you're a citizen if you are born in the country.

You're a citizen if either one of your parents are citizens of the country. Or you could apply for naturalization to become a citizen. But that... process involves you being over the age of 18, you have to live here for five years or longer legally, you have to speak English, pass a civics test, pledge an oath to the country and the constitution. And then the last thing we discussed were civic duties.

So some of the things that we expect citizens to participate in would be like going and serving on a jury, paying your taxes, etc. All right, so I hope that was a good review for you of the very first semester of 8th grade American History. Study hard tonight and watch for my next video for this second semester. Thanks!

Transcript for:First Semester History Review Notes

Transcript for:
First Semester History Review Notes