Learning by Teaching: AP US Essays

After my AP US Exam was given, we had about a month left before taking the state exams. So I assigned some research papers. Here are some things I learned while grading them:

• President John Quincy Adams had a foreign born wife.
• The infamous Peggy Eaton affair may have cost South Carolina its only possible president.
• The orignal plan was to kidnap Lincoln and use him to end the Civil War.
• The Union threatened to declare war on any nation that supported the Confederacy, which Britain and France almost did.
• In 1869 Wyoming became the first state to give women suffrage, apparently to encourage more single women to move there.
• The NAACP was started by a group of white people.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr.
• Ronald Reagan added more trade barriers than any administration since Hoover.