This week we’re starting in on some history! Hooray!

Thought Provoker to Start: Listen to (or watch, if you have Disney+!) “Right Hand Man” from the musical Hamilton. Think about the different characters and how they feel about the war. What are they willing to give up in order to win?

Read James Ambuske et al., “The American Revolution,” Michael Hattem, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Listen to our course podcast here or read the transcript here. Before you listen, you might want to read this post about how to listen to a podcast for a class.

Then read a primary source document available at this Google Doc. (5 readers per document, first come, first served; mark in the Google Doc which document you’ve read). If you have questions about what the document means, or if you have observations, feel free to comment in your document.

Response

Respond to the reading, the podcast, and your primary-source document (and others’ documents), considering who bears the cost of war, and how the American Revolution changed the world for those who experienced it (for good or for ill). (Response options: blog post: submit here)

Consider these questions as you evaluate.

• Who is writing this document? In terms of the American Revolution, how would you describe them?
• Who are they writing to?
• Each of these documents discusses one (or more) ways the American Revolution cost someone something. What cost is being discussed in this document?
• Are there other groups in the Revolution who also share this cost?
• Is this cost something that will go away when the war is over, or will it persist afterwards?