3.13 Continuity and Change in Period 3

Continuity and change over time (CCOT) is the reasoning skill of explaining what changed and what stayed the same across a stretch of time, and why. A turning point is an event that marks a significant change in direction, such as the Treaty of Paris of 1763 or the Constitution.

A strong CCOT answer does three things: it names a specific starting point and ending point, explains the change or continuity with evidence, and explains why it happened. Good essays usually show both change and continuity, then weigh which was greater.

For Period 3, useful turning points include 1763 (the end of salutary neglect), 1776 (the decision for independence) and 1787–1788 (the replacement of the Articles with a stronger national government). Arguing for one of these as the most important turning point is a good way to organize an essay.

• Government: from colonies under the British crown to an independent republic with a written Constitution, a Bill of Rights and an elected president.
• Ideas: Enlightenment and republican ideas about natural rights and consent became the founding principles of a nation.
• Slavery in the North: Northern states began gradual emancipation, creating growing free Black communities.
• Religion: several states ended official churches, and Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom separated church and state.
• Politics: the first political parties formed, and power began to move peacefully between them in 1800.

• Slavery persisted and expanded in the South, and the Constitution protected it in several clauses.
• Women still lacked political and most legal rights; republican motherhood gave them a new role, not equality.
• Voting remained mostly limited to white men with property.
• Westward expansion onto Native land continued, now driven by the United States instead of Britain, and conflict with Native nations continued with it.
• Self-government: colonists had run their own assemblies before 1754, and Americans kept and expanded that tradition.

Historians debate how revolutionary the Revolution was. Some stress radical change: the overthrow of monarchy and hereditary privilege and the spread of ideas about equality that later movements used. Others stress continuity: the same wealthy elites largely kept power, and enslaved people, women and Native Americans gained little or lost ground.

Your thesis can take either side, or a nuanced middle, as long as you support it with evidence and explain your reasoning. Noting that the answer depends on which group you look at is a strong way to show complexity.