The Idea of America: A Case Study Approach
Part 5 of 5

JAMES E. DAVIS
H. MICHAEL HARTOONIAN
RICHARD VAN SCOTTER
WILLIAM E. WHITE

     There is no owner’s manual for a republic. There is no place for a new generation of Americans to find the secrets for addressing issues relevant to the contemporary United States. Experience is the only guide, and the stories of that experience are contained in national history. These are stories of how Americans have shaped their times and influenced their future. At times, Americans have demonstrated absolute brilliance; at other times, the nation has struggled to live up to its promise. Yet in every time, individual citizens — some well-known, but most of them normal citizens — in their communities, states, and national institutions have debated values that are central to the nation.
     By studying American history as a sequence of case studies, students can learn how past Americans have struggled with the problems of their day in the context of the value tensions that frame the enduring American debate. Going beyond the standard memorization and recitation of dates, places, and events, American history becomes a fascinating investigation of individual citizens in action. In the actions of these citizens, students discover the relevance of American history to their lives. The continuity of the American debate is readily apparent when the case study approach employs the value tensions as an analytical tool.
     A case study brings together two complementary attributes: chronology and historical inquiry. The design of a case study engages a chronological sequence of important events in American history to highlight the four democratic value tensions. Each case study is constructed around one or more value tensions: (1) common wealth versus private wealth, (2) law versus ethics, (3) diversity versus unity, and (4) freedom versus equality. All student activities use primary and secondary source material and media resources, often making use of living-history documentaries.
     Each case study includes a series of learning paths for teachers to use. These approaches to the study of a topic allow teachers and students to follow a map through an area of historical study — a significant event, idea, Congressional act, judicial decision, trend, phenomenon, or movement — that captures the essence of a case study. Each case study involves students in living history, uses media resources, and includes an assessment to evaluate student progress. Figure 1 is an example of a road map diagram; the topic is government and law. The learning object is Reconstruction, which we discuss later in this article. One related value tension, freedom and equality, is used as an example.
     In this article, we highlight four events included in the Colonial Williamsburg History and Civics curriculum that demonstrate the organization and unfolding of case studies. In all, the project will include nearly one hundred case studies that span cultural topics related to American history.

CASE STUDY: REVOLUTIONARY RESISTANCE (1765-76)
     In the mid-1760s, colonial Americans chafed under increasing British ministerial government actions. Still, Americans felt strong ties to the British empire. They believed in the superiority of British common law and the rights and privileges due to them as subjects of King George III. However, the ideals of the Enlightenment were beginning to outline new principles for society and government. The stage was set for a law versus ethics debate.
     The emerging ethical principles were grounded in the writings John Locke and Montesquieu. Their main precept was that by virtue of being human, man was capable of governing himself. Their political theories advanced the idea that individuals of conscience did not need a king or master to tell them what to do. However, the individual’s natural right of self-determination conflicted with the British government’s prosecution of law. Americans broke the law to protest the Stamp Act, and they rioted in the streets to protest occupation by British troops. Patriots stockpiled weapons and created extralegal militias and governmental bodies. Loyalists were coerced, harassed, and denied due process of law. The revolutionary generation was caught up in their defining debate: When can law-abiding citizens justify breaking the law to adhere to higher ethical principles? Many ethical issues Americans of the revolutionary period faced were revisited over the next century.
     On their journey through this seminal period in early American history, teachers and students will investigate, examine, and debate the issues with which Americans struggled. All Americans did not agree in this debate. The issues pitted revolutionaries against loyalists, idealists against realists, and the well-to-do against small farmers and laborers.
Similar debates in America today include arguments for and against abortion, the use of carbon-based energy, and government practices during wartime, including policies toward enemy detainees. Students could also study the actions of income tax resistors who believe the government is using the revenues they collect for inappropriate purposes. In their contemporary communities, students will find that the debate over law and ethics continues. Where do they stand in this debate? What positions will they take? How will they engage the problems of their communities?

CASE STUDY: RECONSTRUCTION (1865-77)
     Americans fought a Civil War over the principles of freedom. Some states maintained that the property rights of their citizens to own other human beings constituted a freedom that the federal government could not regulate. Others maintained that nothing, not even race and condition of servitude, could negate the natural right to freedom vested in every individual. But does freedom guarantee equality? With more freedom, is equality compromised? And are there any circumstances under which a republic should support inequality?
     The defeat of the Confederacy brought on the challenge of reuniting the country. President Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) and his successor, Andrew Johnson (1865-69), favored leniency in readmitting southern states to the Union. Radical Republicans in the North called for retribution that led to military occupation of the defeated Confederate states and limited equality.
     At the same time, African Americans discovered that their freedom did not guarantee equality. The Civil War had granted freedom to African Americans, but that freedom was limited without guarantees for political rights and equal economic opportunity. Reconstruction marked the beginning of the struggle for African American equality, a journey that would last more than one hundred years.
     As students study Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South, they learn about the changes that took place in society. Newly freed African Americans wanted to own small farms, but the former landowning class preferred to preserve plantations. In 1865, some former slaves were promised forty acres and a mule for farming by General Sherman, but later that year President Johnson allowed white owners to reclaim the land. Many former slaves became sharecroppers, where they tilled a few acres on farms owned by a white landlord in a new kind of economic subservience.
     Other conflicts divided the Republican South. Scalawags were Southerners who joined the Republican Party to improve their economic position and wrestle power from the established elite. Carpetbaggers moved from North to South after the war and took advantage of opportunities that Reconstruction offered. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) granted African American citizens the right to vote, and most of them supported the Republican Party. These three groups did not share the same values, but together they reshaped Southern politics and society.
     Citizens of the United States continue to struggle with the values of freedom and equality. An investigation of the issues surrounding health care offers an opportunity to examine circumstances under which the republic supports inequality. Legal immigrants entering the United States find freedom, but do they find equality? Can individual states determine the freedoms granted to immigrants, or must those standards be applied equally by the federal government? The debates concerning the values of freedom and equality are critical contemporary disputes informed by the experience of previous generations.

CASE STUDY: STRANGERS IN THE LAND (1840-60)
     In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States faced an unparalleled wave of immigration. American citizens debated whether the new diversity damaged the unity of the nation. The stream of immigrants formed a confluence of cultures that blended to define the new America. Was it possible for subjects of traditionally governed European and Asian countries to adapt to the democratic principles and ideals of the republic?
     Another problem was that the United States was mostly a Protestant nation; however, a significant number of these new immigrants were not. Was it possible for American democracy to embrace Catholicism? There was also the issue of race: Could Chinese immigrants be assimilated? Even Irish immigrants were characterized in the American press as a separate race from whites. Each nation across the world was identified by ethnicity. What was the ethnic identity of the United States? The country focused new energy and attention on education as the vehicle for creating American citizens. The belief that democratic ideals were learned principles provided an opportunity to incorporate most immigrants into the American nation.
     Although their livelihoods and lifestyles varied from those of other Americans, for the most part new immigrants held a civic vision for the nation. They brought diverse histories, spoke different languages, and attended various churches, yet they shared a quest for knowledge, justice, and wealth through economic opportunity and the potential of a liberal democracy. Today people from every corner of the globe live in the United States. Each group brings different beliefs, social practices, artifacts, art, literature, and music to America.
     The integration of immigrants into American culture was not easy to accomplish. The issues surrounding nineteenth-century immigration led to some of the most rancorous debates in American history. Communities adopted legalized discrimination; riots erupted in Northern cities between Protestants and Catholics over the issue of education; and American workers railed against the influx of cheaper labor. Political action groups lobbied to halt or severely restrict immigration.
Because of different narratives, the United States has struggled with an ambiguous identity. Is society one nation, or is it a collection of people who have little kinship with each other? Regardless of ethnic heritage, everyone is part of the national story. In this tension between one and many, people find both strength and weakness.
     These issues are being debated in American communities today and provide an excellent opportunity to engage students. Does America’s diversity — shaped by its heritage as an immigrant nation — strengthen or weaken it? Is it possible to celebrate both diversity and unity?

CASE STUDY: THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM (1916-56)
     America’s modern highway system dates to 1916, when the federal government authorized the Federal Road Act that allocated seventy-five million dollars to improve roads and encouraged states to establish highway departments. The following Federal Road Act (1921) provided funds to improve state roads and link them to a network of federal highways. In 1925, the highway numbering system was established, and spending on roads exceeded one billion dollars. Within twenty-five years, that one billion dollars would be dwarfed by spending in the 1950s.
     With the end of World War II in 1945 and family bank accounts built up, consumer demand for automobiles rose. Soon cars came rolling off assembly lines. By the 1950s, the automobile had made a significant impact on American culture. In an open country covering a vast geographic spread, with the unrestricted right to travel, the automobile was the ticket to a newfound freedom. However, existing highways were insufficient to handle the traffic created by suburban development. Expanding private wealth without a comparable investment in the common wealth would be problematic. There were also other reasons for investing in the national road system. The growing economy needed reliable transportation for commodities, and military planners needed reliable roads to ensure the defense of the nation during the cold war.
     Political momentum had been building to reinforce a U.S. road system that was straining to accommodate traffic. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed a commission to study the crisis, and the group recommended a massive investment in a national superhighway system. In 1956, Congress approved the Interstate Highway Act. In a democracy, citizens must regularly consider when it is appropriate and necessary to support the public infrastructure and enhance the community or nation’s common wealth. Individual wealth often is also advanced as a result of public taxation and spending.
     The superhighway plan called for forty-one thousand miles of highway construction paid for by the people: 90 percent of the cost was to be paid by the federal government and 10 percent by the affected states. This construction would include beltways around major cities connecting them to local roads. It led to more suburban development that reached further into rural areas. Farmland turned into rows of housing developments, shopping centers, industrial areas, paved streets, and highways.
     What is the trade-off between the benefits of urban expansion and its impact on the landscape and environment? What about American’s love affair with the automobile seems to preclude investment in mass transit systems, such as light rail and high-speed trains that would provide more balance between private and public transportation?
     The decision to tax private wealth to build a common infrastructure can provide great advantages to society and, as in the case of the interstate highway system, increase trade, commerce, and the private wealth of individuals across a large cross-section of society. How can this type of investment in the common wealth benefit individual citizens? The same investment can also produce unintended consequences that change or damage society. Today, debates over investments in the common wealth are evident in investment (or lack of it) by business and government in developing new modes of transportation and energy resources. Another example is local governments taking private property by eminent domain to revitalize business districts. Also, how will the government’s investment in the Internet change culture and society? The relationship between common and private wealth continually requires citizens to weigh the trade-off between personal choice and public good.

CONCLUSION
     The case study approach allows students to dig deeply into the ideas, controversies, and issues that the United States faced as it embarked on a daring political adventure: establishing a democratic republic over a vast landscape. Building the republic was accomplished in a dynamic and changing world. At the time of its founding, America’s economic culture was firmly embedded in agrarian roots; industrialization was only beginning to take hold in Europe. The nineteenth century in America was a time of immense technological change and economic development. En route to the twentieth-first century, the nation confronted social, political, economic, and ethical challenges that could be resolved only through vigorous civil debate framed by the enduring value tensions of a democracy.

Find more information on The Social Studies at http://www.heldref.org

JAMES E. DAVIS is the executive director of the Social Science Education Consortium in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a civics textbook coauthor.
H. MICHAEL HARTOONIAN is a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota and past president of the National Council for the Social Studies.
RICHARD VAN SCOTTER is an educator and writer who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a contributor to the media on cultural issues.
WILLIAM E. WHITE is the executive producer and director of educational program development at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and is responsible for the foundation’s Teacher Institute Program and Electronic Field Trip Series. He received his doctorate in American studies from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.