Describe the House of Burgesses and New England town meetings as early colonial self-governing institutions and explain their limits.
Even while ruled by England, many colonists practiced real self-government in their own local affairs. In 1619 -- the same year enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia -- the colony created the House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in England's North American colonies: local areas elected representatives, called burgesses, who met to help make laws for the colony. In New England, many towns held a different kind of self-rule called a town meeting, in which free adult male property owners gathered in person to vote directly on local matters like roads, schools, and taxes, rather than through elected representatives -- some of the most direct citizen self-government practiced anywhere in the colonies, and a tradition some New England towns still practice today.
Both institutions had real limits: only property-owning men could usually vote or serve, which meant most women, poor men, enslaved people, and Native people had no voice in either the House of Burgesses or a town meeting. Still, these were genuine, working practices of self-government, decades before independence was ever discussed, and they planted an idea that would matter enormously by the 1760s and 1770s: that colonists were capable of, and used to, governing significant parts of their own affairs.
Mastery looks like: They can describe the House of Burgesses and a town meeting as two different styles of self-rule and name at least one group excluded from both.
Common stumbles: Thinking colonial self-rule meant full democracy for everyone; confusing the House of Burgesses (representative) with a town meeting (direct).