Teaching guide
For high-school independent readers, homeschool discussion, and introductory college seminars. Students need no prior reading of Rothbard. Introduce a colony as a settlement under an external government and distinguish a local assembly from Parliament.
Allow 15–25 minutes to prepare: read the exploration, preview the images and content notes, and choose questions. Reading the original chapters requires additional time; the short explorations do not replace them.
Choose a format
- Independent reading: follow one sequence and use its final comparison prompt.
- Homeschool discussion: pause after each scene to identify participants and their choices.
- Introductory seminar: compare accounts and examine which claims the linked sources support. Ask students to distinguish a source’s testimony from an interpretation.
Print a discussion packet
Open a student or instructor version below, then use Print. Packets include images, narratives, questions, source references, and stable scene URLs. Instructor versions add guidance rather than a required interpretive answer.
Who gets to govern?
5 scenes · 15 minutes reading · 25 minutes optional discussion
No prior reading of the book. Know that a colony is a settlement governed under an outside authority; unfamiliar institutions are explained in each scene.
Student print version · Instructor print version
Boston protesters destroy East India Company tea: The scene depicts colonists using disguises associated with Native people. The exact identification of those disguises differs across the cited accounts; the picture does not document Native participation.
Absent Pennsylvania legislators are forced into the Assembly: The narrative describes legislators seized and forced into a chamber; the reconstruction depicts a blocked attempt to leave.
Who may speak and believe?
4 scenes · 11 minutes reading · 25 minutes optional discussion
No prior reading of the book. The scene introductions explain civil courts, banishment, printing type, and libel.
What makes resistance legitimate?
3 scenes · 8 minutes reading · 30 minutes optional discussion
No prior reading of the book. Understand that the Continental Army fought for independence from Britain; each scene explains its disputed obligation.
Student print version · Instructor print version
The Pennsylvania Line mutinies: The narrative describes an officer killed during the mutiny, emissaries executed as spies, and executions after the separate New Jersey mutiny.
Reuse and attribution
Paintings and companion additions: CC BY 4.0, credit freecapitalists.org and link to the scene. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, Volumes I–IV (Mises Institute, 2011): CC BY 3.0. Volume V (Mises Institute, 2019): CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, with adaptation by permission. External sources keep their own terms; these packets do not grant permission to reproduce those works.