The Well-Trained Mind

Topics to Explore

• the Mayflower
• early American settlements
• Russia under Peter the Great and his successors
• Prussia in the eighteenth century
• the Enlightenment
• the agricultural revolution
• Native American cultures
• the British in India
• the French Revolution
• British-French conflict in Canada
• the American Revolution
• the Napoleonic Wars
• the industrial revolution
• Simón Bolívar’s fight for independence in South America
• the siege of the Alamo
• the California gold rush
• the Lewis and Clark expedition
• the U.S. acquisition of North American territories
• Australia’s beginnings as a penal colony

Primary Sources

• Samuel de Champlain, “The Foundation of Quebec” (1608)
• The Mayflower Compact (1620)
• Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” (1775)
• The Declaration of Independence (1776)
• United States Constitution (1787)
• Bill of Rights (U.S.) (1789)
• The Tennis Court Oath (1789)
• Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)
• Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Women” (1791)
• Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)

Memorization

• the Rulers of England and their dates
  from James I and Charles I
  through the Commonwealth,
  the Protectorate (both Cromwells),
  and the Restoration, on to Queen Victoria
• the dates of service for the prime ministers
  Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Younger,
  the duke of Wellington,
  Viscount Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peele
• the dates of rule for the French monarchs
  of the House of Bourbon
• the dates of Napoleon's Republics
• the tsars of Russia
  from Peter the Great through Nicholas I
• the presidents of the United States
  from George Washington through Zachary Taylor
• the dates of the English Civil War,
  the American Revolution,
  and the Napoleonic Wars
• the Declaration of Independence
• the Preamble to the Constitution