Please click here or the image below to leave your response.

Massacre in Boston by Jacob Lawrence, 1955

Based on this interpretation (parts I & II), was the American Revolution justified?

BONUS (optional) material: Interview with historian Woody Holton regarding the Founding Fathers and why the creation of America still matters to Americans.

Favorite quote: "We’ve got to let go of the heroes and replace them with heroics. That is, to see that the same person can do something heroic on Monday and be an enslaver or a town destroyer....And is that so hard? Does anybody have any perfect friends? Most of us are some of this and some of that. And I think we are more likely to unify around the founding if we admit the feet of clay, as well as the virtuous aspects. And I think one way to do that is to focus on people’s heroics rather than insisting on heroes."

Photo by Joel Sternfeld, 1978

“Photography has always been capable of manipulation. Even more subtle and more invidious is the fact that any time you put a frame to the world, it’s an interpretation. I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that’s going on to the left of the frame. You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. There’s an infinite number of ways you can do this: photographs have always been authored.” -- Joel Sternfeld, 2004

For HW, please take notes on the presentation below and be prepared to answer the following question:

How does the School House Rock interpretation of colonial resistance differ from that of bUSH? Compare and contrast the relative biases of each. 

HINT: add up the amount of money raised by the taxes on the colonists and compare that to the amount of money the "Peace Force" cost the British, for example. 

Feel free to watch this at 1.25x speed!

A few questions to think about, courtesy of bETH tHE silc:

1. How significant was the amount of land gained by the British after the war?
2. Why was defense a concern for the British post-war?
3. How was living in the colonies a financial advantage compared to living in Britain (consider taxes and deficit spending)?
4. What did the British government do to attempt to compensate for the debt after the war?
5. What was the main difference between the Navigation Acts and the Parliamentary taxes?