Write A Brief Description Next To Each ID Including What, W ✓ Solved

Write a brief description next to each ID including (what, w

Write a brief description next to each ID including (what, who, why, where, how). Relate each idea to the history of the USA to 1865, using information from Voices of Freedom, Volume 1 (Eric Foner).

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

This paper provides concise (what, who, why, where, how) descriptions for ten key IDs (documents, events, or movements) in U.S. history to 1865, using Voices of Freedom, Volume 1 (Foner) as the primary documentary source and situating each item in broader historical scholarship. Each entry summarizes the core content (what), identifies principal actors (who), explains significance (why), notes the location or scope (where), and outlines how the event/document operated or unfolded (how) in relation to developments up to the end of the Civil War era (1865).

ID 1: Jamestown founding (1607)

What: The establishment of the first permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Who: English Virginia Company settlers and investors. Why: Economic motives—search for profit, land, and natural resources—as well as imperial expansion. Where: Chesapeake Bay region (present-day Virginia). How: Chartered colony funded by investors, survived through adaptation, tobacco cultivation, and interactions (often violent) with Indigenous peoples (Foner, Voices of Freedom). Jamestown set patterns of English settlement, labor systems, and colonist–Native relations that shaped later American development (Wood, 1992).

ID 2: Mayflower Compact (1620)

What: A brief self-governing agreement signed by Pilgrim leaders aboard the Mayflower. Who: Separatist settlers and non-separatist passengers who bound themselves into a civil body politic. Why: To establish order and legitimate governance absent a royal charter. Where: Plymouth Colony (present-day Massachusetts). How: A compact pledging to enact laws for the general good; it exemplified early colonial assertions of consent and self-government (Foner). The document prefigured later American political ideas about covenantal governance and majority rule (Morgan, 1975).

ID 3: Declaration of Independence (1776)

What: The formal statement declaring the thirteen colonies independent from Britain. Who: Drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Continental Congress. Why: To justify rebellion and unify colonies around principles of natural rights and sovereignty. Where: Philadelphia; applied to the thirteen colonies. How: A text combining Enlightenment philosophy with a list of grievances; used to mobilize domestic and international support for independence (Foner; Declaration of Independence, 1776). It shaped political rhetoric about liberty that influenced debates about slavery and rights through 1865 (Wood, 1992).

ID 4: U.S. Constitution (1787)

What: The foundational legal framework creating federal institutions and distributing powers between national and state governments. Who: Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, including Madison, Washington, and Hamilton. Why: To replace the ineffective Articles of Confederation and create a stronger, stable union. Where: Philadelphia; for the newly independent states. How: Compromises (bicameral legislature, Electoral College, Three-Fifths Clause) structured governance and slavery’s constitutional protections—issues that generated persistent sectional conflict leading to the Civil War (Foner; U.S. Constitution, 1787; Wilentz, 2005).

ID 5: Northwest Ordinance (1787)

What: Legislation organizing territorial governance and the process for admission of new states. Who: Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. Why: To manage western lands, encourage orderly settlement, and create republican states. Where: Northwest Territory (land northwest of the Ohio River). How: Set procedures for territory-to-state transition and prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory—an early federal policy carving out free territory that influenced regional balance debates (Foner; McPherson, 1988).

ID 6: Missouri Compromise (1820)

What: Congressional agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state while banning slavery north of 36°30′ in the Louisiana Purchase. Who: U.S. Congress and sectional leaders (e.g., Henry Clay). Why: To preserve the balance between free and slave states and avert sectional crisis. Where: National legislature affecting western territories and state admissions. How: Political bargaining created a temporary equilibrium but institutionalized a geographic divide over slavery that continued to fuel conflict up to 1865 (Foner; Oakes, 2013).

ID 7: Second Great Awakening (early 19th c.)

What: A widespread evangelical Protestant revival movement emphasizing individual conversion and moral reform. Who: Preachers, revivalists, and lay participants across the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Why: Social and cultural change—responses to market revolution and democratization—inspired religious activism. Where: Nationwide but strongest in the Northeast and the frontier. How: Camp meetings, itinerant preaching, and new denominations fostered reform movements (abolitionism, temperance, women’s rights) that reshaped political culture before the Civil War (Foner; Howe, 2007).

ID 8: Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)

What: The Declaration of Sentiments articulating women’s grievances and rights, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. Who: Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott; women’s rights activists. Why: To demand legal and political equality for women, including suffrage. Where: Seneca Falls, New York. How: A convention and formal statement that launched organized women’s rights advocacy, intersecting with abolitionist networks and antebellum reform culture (Foner; Wilentz, 2005).

ID 9: Mexican–American War and Territorial Expansion (1846–1848)

What: War between the United States and Mexico leading to vast territorial gains for the U.S. (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). Who: U.S. government under President James K. Polk and the Mexican state. Why: Expansionist aims (Manifest Destiny), desire for Pacific access, and sectional pressures over slavery. Where: Southwest North America; new territories from Mexico to the U.S. How: Military conquest and diplomatic treaty produced new land that intensified slavery debates and political conflict through the 1850s (Foner; McPherson, 1988).

ID 10: Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

What: Presidential proclamation freeing enslaved people in Confederate-held territory. Who: Issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Why: As a wartime measure to weaken the Confederacy, reshape the war’s moral purpose, and pave the way for abolition. Where: Applied to Confederate states in rebellion (not Border States under Union control). How: Used executive war powers to declare freedom in rebel areas; it transformed Union aims, encouraged Black enlistment, and anticipated the Thirteenth Amendment’s abolition of slavery in 1865 (Foner; Oakes, 2013; McPherson, 1988).

Conclusion

These ten IDs—drawn and contextualized with primary materials from Voices of Freedom (Foner) and secondary scholarship—illustrate the institutional, ideological, and social trajectories that shaped the United States through 1865. From early colonial experiment and constitutional compromise to reform movements and civil war emancipation, each document or event reveals how debates about liberty, governance, and slavery developed and ultimately contributed to the nation’s transformation.

References

• Foner, E. (Ed.). Voices of Freedom, Volume 1: Documents in American History to 1865. (Voices of Freedom, Vol. 1) (Foner).
• Declaration of Independence (1776).
• United States Constitution (1787).
• Wood, G. S. (1992). The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Vintage.
• Morgan, E. S. (1975). American Slavery, American Freedom. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Davis, D. B. (1975). The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Oxford University Press.
• Howe, D. W. (2007). What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford University Press.
• Oakes, J. (2013). Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Wilentz, S. (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. W. W. Norton & Company.
• McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press.