Early Republic, Markets & Migration — Problem set, Grade 7
Five focused units, a three-session source workshop, chapter review, and chapter quiz.
Review the key ideas
The Early Republic: Finance, Parties & National Authority
Jefferson spent a decade insisting the federal government may do only what the Constitution authorises. Offered Louisiana for $15 million in 1803, he bought 828,000 square miles — nearly doubling the country at about three cents an acre — and admitted no clause permitted it.
War of 1812: Maritime Rights, Native Nations & Consequences
Congress declared war on Britain in 1812 by the narrowest margin in American history, achieved almost none of its stated aims, and signed a peace restoring the situation exactly as before. The war still settled something: it destroyed organised Native resistance east of the Mississippi and killed the Federalist Party.
Erie Canal: Engineering, Markets & New York Communities
Before the canal, shipping a ton of wheat from Buffalo to New York cost about $100 and took three weeks. After 1825 it cost about $10 and took six days. A ninety per cent fall in transport cost does not make existing trade cheaper; it creates trade that could not exist before.
Market & Industrial Change: Production, Labor & Technology
A shoemaker learned a seven-year trade and made whole shoes. A factory divided that into steps a person could learn in a morning — more shoes, cheaper, and a worker who could be replaced as easily as trained. The bargain of industrial work is in that sentence.
Migration, Immigration & Growing Towns
New York City held about 60,000 people in 1800 and more than 800,000 by 1860. That growth was not births: it was the Irish famine, German political exile and New England farms that could no longer compete with western grain, all arriving in the same streets at the same time.
Problem 1
Answer and explanation
The treaty concerns the governments that signed it, while continuing Indigenous decisions concern another political community’s authority. A colored map of U.S. claims does not show universal consent or uniform control. Further treaties, local records, and Native histories are needed to explain how power and land access changed.
Identify the treaty parties.
Identify who was not represented in that agreement.
Separate diplomatic transfer from local authority and consent.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 2
Answer and explanation
A policy can improve government borrowing conditions while distributing costs and benefits unevenly. Creditors, taxpayers, merchants, and farming households may occupy different positions. Compare the financing mechanism, institutional authority, and distributional evidence instead of assuming stronger public credit proves equal benefit to all households.
Problem 3
Answer and explanation
The draft reverses the sequence. The battle could not force the already signed treaty. The dates alone do not explain every negotiation, news delay, or later political effect; diplomatic and military records would clarify those questions.
Order the dates.
Reject a later cause for an earlier signature.
Identify communication, ratification, and later political interpretation as further inquiries.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 4
Answer and explanation
It identifies pressures but not how institutions decided to act, how participants assessed alternatives, or why particular choices prevailed.
Problem 5
Answer and explanation
The saving is 6 tokens per shipment and 30 for five shipments; the modeled charge falls 60%. These invented numbers illustrate a comparable calculation. They do not establish historical rates, every merchant’s access, workers’ conditions, land effects, or equal prosperity.
Subtract 4 from 10.
Multiply the saving by 5.
Distinguish the stipulated merchant saving from all community outcomes.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 6
Answer and explanation
It links the canal’s eastern end with the Atlantic port network. The full movement depends on connected routes, not the canal segment alone.
Problem 7
Answer and explanation
Productivity rises from 80/80=1 item to 120/80=1.5 items per worker-hour, a 50% increase under the model. Work hours remain unchanged in the supplied record. Pay, safety, job security, and the distribution of gains are unknown; these invented totals do not establish universal wellbeing.
Compute 80 worker-hours in each case.
Divide output by worker-hours.
Keep productivity separate from pay and conditions.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 8
Answer and explanation
No. Pay, ownership, hours, conditions, and bargaining power affect distribution. A productivity measure does not establish all these outcomes.
Problem 9
Answer and explanation
The ending count is 100+12−5+20−7=120. Net growth is 20, while arrivals are also 20 only by coincidence in this example. The record does not specify where arrivals came from, so they cannot all be classified as overseas immigrants. Actual census interpretation also needs definitions and recording limits.
Add births and arrivals.
Subtract deaths and departures.
Distinguish inward movement from overseas immigration.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 10
Answer and explanation
People within a country have different circumstances, resources, beliefs, relationships, and aims. A particular decision needs particular evidence.