Applying a consistent historical theme throughout a social studies course is an effective long-term planning strategy that can promote student engagement, retention of information, and contextualized knowledge of history's continuity and change. This article demonstrates how one such theme, power and liberty, might be incorporated into a secondary American history course. Teachers should introduce the theme early in the course using questions designed to help the students define and understand the parameters of power and liberty as a lens through which the past might be viewed. A subsequent and repeated application of consistent scaffolding questions to events in American history promotes the analysis of how those events changed the balance of power and liberty for individuals and various groups in society. Armed with this contextualized knowledge, students can then apply the theme of power and liberty as another approach to the examination of current events in American society. (Contains 4 tables.)