11.1 Students analyze the significant events in the founding of the nation and its attempts to realize the philosophy of government described in the Declaration of Independence.

1. Describe the Enlightenment and the rise of democratic ideas as the context in which the nation was founded.
2. Analyze the ideological origins of the American Revolution, the divinely bestowed unalienable natural rights philosophy of the Founding Fathers, the debates on the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and the addition of the Bill of Rights.
3. Understand the history of the Constitution after 1787 with emphasis on federal versus state authority and growing democratization.
4. Examine the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction and of the industrial revolution, including demographic shifts and the emergence in the late nineteenth century of the United States as a world power.