History Day 2022
DEBATE & DIPLOMACY IN HISTORY:
SUCCESSES, FAILURES, CONSEQUENCES
Here are some suggested topics—from hundreds available on CTEXplored.org—to inspire your 2022 History Day project.
Links are provided to stories or buy the hard copy of the issue ($8 each) in our online SHOP.
Diplomacy in Border Disputes
These excerpts—all from the October 8, 1663 meeting of the General Court (later called the General Assembly) of the Connecticut Colony—show that a great deal of the colony’s business—with the Dutch, neighboring colonies, and the Native American tribes—was about settling towns, settling borders, and resolving disputes.
“Surveying Connecticut’s Borders”
The Mohegan Petition of 1789
This primary document will inspire your investigation of the Mohegan—and other tribes’—efforts to hold onto its land throughout the colonial period and to become the sovereign nation it is today.
“Breaking the Myth of the Unmanaged Landscape“
Debating Slavery in Connecticut
This sermon by Rev. Levi Hart of Farmington is a primary document that shows that slavery was debated in Connecticut at the time of the Revolutionary War.
Prime and Prince of Fairfield petitioned the General Assembly to end slavery, 1779
“Black Abolitionists Speak” Maria Stewart, Amos Beman, entered the national debate about abolition of slavery in early 1800s Connecticut.
The Revolutionary War
Washington and Rochambeau
Diplomacy and debate were involved in ending the Revolutionary War. Discover Connecticut’s role in winning the American Revolution. “The ‘Conference’ State,” Fall 2005 and “Mapping “Rochambeau’s March Across Connecticut,” Spring 2012
Connecticut’s Diplomat Silas Deane
Justus Riley and Justice for Patty
Instead of collecting Caribbean imports at a Connecticut wharf in 1796, Justus Riley found himself stuck in an interminable quagmire of international diplomacy, untried federal law, disruption of wars, congressional impasses, and presidential vetoes.
The War of 1812
Connecticut debated the war on the floor of the State House—and considered seceding from the new United States of America. “The Notorious Hartford Convention,” Summer 2012
The Right to Vote, Early Civil Rights
Explore the debate and diplomacy in early advocacy for Black people’s right to vote in Connecticut.
“No Taxation without Representation: Black Voting in Connecticut”
“The Constitution of 11818 & Black Suffrage: Rights for All?”
The Constitution of 1818
Find stories and several podcasts about the political debates surrounding Connecticut’s first state constitution—adopted 30 years after Connecticut became a state!
Connecticut and its Constitutions
Grating the Nutmeg Ep 56: The Debates of the Constitution of 1818
Civil War
Not everyone in Connecticut was for the Union. Read about the debate as it happened in Litchfield. “The Peace Movement in Litchfield,” Spring 2011
The diplomacy of Abraham Lincoln as the country devolves into war: “Glimpses of Lincoln’s Brilliance,” Fall 2005
Harriet Beecher Stowe and her influence on Abraham Lincoln: “Lincoln and a Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
First Ambassador to Haiti
Ebenezer Bassett of Connecticut
The diplomatic challenges faced by the first Black ambassador to the first Black republic.
World War I
The Connecticut National Guard on the Mexican Border Failed diplomacy in the run up to World War I.
Frederic Walcott: The Making of a Humanitarian U.S. Senator from Connecticut Frederic Walcott’s greatest claim to fame was his work with Herbert Hoover during World War I to bring relief to the hungry refugees of Belgium and Poland.
Women’s Suffrage
Explore the debate over women’s right to vote in our compendium of stories about women’s suffrage.
World War II
Thomas Dodd and the Nuremberg Trials The diplomacy involved in prosecuting World War II’s most notorious Nazi war criminals—and Connecticut’s Thomas Dodd’s surprising role.
Caroline Ferriday: Godmother to Ravensbruck Survivors Diplomacy was required to save survivors of Nazi Germany’s Ravensbruck concentration camp.
Connecticut’s Income Tax Debate
“The Anti-Income Tax Rally of 1991”