Page 153 - 1619 Project Curriculum

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the Great Depression and then, formally, Richard Nixon in 1971.”

Key Names, fiat currency
Dates, and
Terms

Guiding 1. Why did the U.S. develop its first national currency, and what role did
Questions the Civil War play in its creation?
2. How was the value of a national currency in the U.S. determined?

6. ”Fabric of Modernity” by Mehrsa Baradaran (page 36)

Excerpt “From the first decades of the 1800s, during the height of the trans-Atlantic
cotton trade, the sheer size of the market and the escalating number of disputes
between counterparties was such that courts and lawyers began to articulate
and codify the common-law standards regarding contracts...Today law students
still study some of these pivotal cases as they learn doctrines like foreseeability,
mutual mistake and damages.”

Key Names, damages, futures contracts, foreseeability, mutual mistake contracts
Dates, and
Terms

Guiding 1. How did increased production of cotton in the South through slave
Questions labor influence trade and business in the U.S., and around the world?
2. How have the laws and contracts developed before the Civil War to
support the cotton industry influenced the financial documents we use
today?

7. “Municipal Bonds” by Tiya Miles (page 40)

Excerpt “As the historian David Quigley has demonstrated, New York City’s
phenomenal economic consolidation came as a result of its dominance in the
Southern cotton trade, facilitated by the construction of the Erie Canal. It was
in this moment — the early decades of the 1800s — that New York City gained
its status as a financial behemoth through shipping raw cotton to Europe and
bankrolling the boom industry that slavery made.”

These materials were created to support ​The 1619 Project​, published in ​The New York Times Magazine​ August
2019. You can find this and more educational resources at ​www.pulitzercenter.org/1619