Week 4 Discussion — Radical or Conservative, and Whose Consent? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

In 1765 delegates from nine colonies declared "that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives", while professing loyalty to the Crown and asking Parliament, by petition, to repeal its law. Ten years later colonial militia were fighting British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. The facts of that road are settled; what historians still argue about is what kind of movement it was, and what its promise of consent meant in colonies where slavery was legal and Native land was being claimed.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Historians debate whether the Revolution was radical or conservative. Looking only at the road from 1763 to 1775, was colonial resistance mainly a conservative defense of rights colonists said they already held, or did it become something more radical as petitions gave way to boycotts, crowds, and committees? Take a position, support it with at least one thing this week's evidence shows (the 1765 declarations, the boycotts, or the crowd actions), and state the strongest case for the other side as fairly as its best defender would.

Option B: The 1765 declarations claim consent to taxation for the colonists, and they say nothing about the enslaved people in every colony or the Native nations beyond the Proclamation's boundary. Should a historian read that claim of consent mainly as a principle that could later be turned to include more people, or mainly as a claim made by and for the colonists who held power in 1765? Take a position, ground it in sourcing and close reading of the pinned fragment, and state the strongest opposing view fairly.

Neither option asks whether slavery was wrong or whether Native nations' land was taken; the course states those facts plainly. Each option asks a question of interpretation that careful readers of the same evidence still answer differently. Pick the option you care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether resistance from 1763 to 1775 looks more conservative or more radical to you, support it with one thing this week's evidence shows, and state the strongest case for the other side; for Option B, say how you would read the 1765 claim of consent, ground it in sourcing and the pinned fragment, and state the strongest opposing view.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (imperial crisis, representation, consent, Stamp Act Congress, petition, boycott, crowd action) correctly.
• Quote only the course's pinned fragments, word for word, with the document and its date, and call the 1765 body the Stamp Act Congress, whatever an archive's title says.
• End with one plain sentence that names what your evidence shows and what it does not.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep present-day politics out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: state a stronger version of the side the poster argued against, point to a place where the poster blurred the Stamp Act Congress and the Continental Congress or treated the colonists as refusing all taxes, or ask what the poster's claim would need from the evidence that this week's sources do not supply. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A and argue that resistance stayed mostly conservative through 1765. The Stamp Act Congress, meeting in 1765, declared "that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives", and the same resolutions profess allegiance to the Crown and ask for repeal by petition. That is the language of people defending rights they say they already have. A reader on the other side would point to the crowds that forced stamp officers to resign, and I concede that crowd action pulled people outside the assemblies into politics. In one plain sentence: the declarations show what delegates from nine colonies claimed in 1765, not what every colonist in the crowds believed.

Notice how it names the right congress, quotes the pinned fragment word for word, concedes part of the other side, and ends in one plain sentence. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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