American History to 1877 (Hist 103)
John A. Ragosta, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Oberlin College
[email protected]
440-775-6209 or 540-718-2073
Fall 2014
last updated 8/25/14
Class: 9:00 – 9:50, Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Classroom: King 327
Office Hours: Rice 306: 11:00-12:00, 2:00-2:30 Mon. and Weds., by appointment and chance
This survey is the first of a two-part introduction to U.S. history. It gives attention to, inter alia,
pre-contact Indian civilizations and the effect of contact; patterns of colonization by several European nations; politics, religion, and society in the British mainland colonies; European settlements elsewhere in what became America; the development of slavery in the Western Hemisphere; the struggle among European powers for supremacy in North America; the causes, ideology, and implications of the American Revolution; the rise of political tension in the early republic; the growth of parties, industrialization, and abolitionism; sectional conflict, the crisis of union, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. It ends with the effective end of Reconstruction in 1877.
Generally, classes will be structured as a lecture and discussion. I expect students to attend class
and to be prepared to participate in a discussion. Attendance is in your interest. Repeated absences will be taken up by the professor and can affect your grade. Discussions should be civil. I refer
you to the very useful guidelines at: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/p4_1
Exams will cover materials from lectures as well as the readings. If you must miss a class, I urge
you to get notes from one of your colleagues.
Grades will be based upon a mid-term (37%), a final (50%), and questions (discussed below,
13%). I also monitor participation in class, and active participation can improve a close final
grade. Any student who receives a “C-” or lower on the mid-term exam must schedule a meeting
with the professor to discuss the exam and class. Grading guidelines are posted to Blackboard.
The final exam is scheduled for Wednesday, December 17, 2:00-4:00.
The add/drop deadline for this class is September 11; the withdrawal deadline is November 4.
Use of electronic devices (laptops, netbooks, telephones, etc.) during class is strictly prohibited.
The textbooks for this class are:
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books,
2002).
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (any edition).
Other materials will be provided, posted on “Blackboard” under Documents or Library Reading.
Only material listed as “Reading” is assigned; “Suggested Reading” and “Additional Reading”
are listed for your benefit (and are certainly not a thorough or even balanced list of scholarship in
the area). “Questions” on the syllabus may or may not be discussed in class.
Questions Assignment: Beginning with the second week of class (the week of September 8th),
once each week that we have class up through and including the week of December 1, by no later
than 8:00 a.m. on the day of class, each student must post in the Blackboard Discussion Board
for that week a question concerning the readings for that day. (The question can be submitted for
Monday, Wednesday, or Friday for the readings for that day. A question must be submitted each
week, even if we meet fewer than three times.) The question might simply seek clarification of
some point in the material. Preferably, the question should raise a broader matter of analysis or
understanding and place the question in the context of the readings. For example, one might ask
of the readings for the second day: “Given the relatively complex nature of pre-contact Native
society and Natives’ extensive trade networks, not to mention the almost immediate brutal actions taken by Europeans, why were Natives relatively ineffective at organizing joint opposition
(across tribal lines) to European incursions?” A question and any background to understand its
context should be no longer than a paragraph. Students should also bring a copy of their questions to class. These questions will be graded and account for 13% of your grade. I encourage
you to discuss questions on the readings with other students.
This syllabus is subject to change at the instructor’s discretion.
Students with a disability requiring special consideration: Oberlin College will make
reasonable accommodations for students with properly documented disabilities. If you are eligible
to receive an accommodation and would like to request it for this course, please discuss it with me
during the first two weeks of class. You will need to provide the Office of Disability Services (50
N. Professor St., Peters Hall Rm. G-27/28) with appropriate documentation.
Syllabus
Day 1: Wednesday, September 3: Introduction, Native Americans Pre-contact and Contact
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 1.
Daniel Richter, “Legacies of Power from Medieval North America,” in Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Past (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011): 11-36 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Michael Schaller, Robert D. Schulzinger, John Besís-Selfa, Janette Thomas Greenwood,
Andrew Kirk, Sarah J. Purcell, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, American Horizons: U.S. History in a
Global Context, Vol. 1 to 1877 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012): 14-19 (Blackboard).
~ 2 ~ Neal Salisbury, “The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 53:3 (Jul., 1996): 435-458 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and
Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003).
Timohty R. Pauketat and Thomas E. Emerson, eds., Cahokia: Domination and Ideology
in the Mississippian World (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997).
Daniel C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (New York:
Vintage, 2006).
Discussion Questions
What limitations face the study of U.S. history?
What special difficulties are encountered in studying Native American history?
What did it mean to be “Indian” in the sixteenth century? To whom?
Neil Salisbury, a historian of Native America, alleges that many historians treat “American history as having been set in motion by the arrival of European explorers and colonizers.” Is
this inevitable?
Day 2: Friday, September 5: Colonizers
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 2.
Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in
America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 33:1 (1976): 289-99 (Blackboard).
Letter from Christopher Columbus to Luis de Santangel (1493):
http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-063/print/index.asp
Additional Reading
Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 2011).
J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
~ 3 ~ Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Discussion Questions
Did European contact mean genocide for American Indians?
Did European national rivalries interfere with or contribute to the colonization of America? Its development?
Must early (post-contact) American history be studied in conjunction with South American, African, and Asian history to provide adequate contextualization?
Day 3: Monday, September 8: Spanish Conquest and New Spain
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 3.
Bartolome de las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (excerpt).
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/text7/casas_destruction.pdf
Mexica (Aztec) & Tlaxcala Accounts of the Spanish Conquest, 1500s
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/text6/mexica_tlaxcala.pdf
Suggested Reading
Lisa Sousa and Kevin Terraciano, “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Nahua and Mixtec Accounts of the Spanish Conquest,” Ethnohistory, 50:2 (Spring 1993): 349-400 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, tr. by J.M. Cohen (Penguin Books, 1963).
William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Discussion Questions
Given the sixteenth century dominance of Spain in colonization, why do Britain and
France overtake Spanish development?
Do Spanish immigrants to the New World differ significantly from later British and
French immigrants? If so, why?
~ 4 ~ Has American history slighted Spanish colonial rule? To make sense of this period, must
one study North American history (or American history generally) rather than U.S. history?
Day 4: Wednesday, September 10: Spanish Frontiers
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 4.
“As They Had Been in Ancient Times:” Pedro Naranjo Relates the Pueblo Revolt, 1680
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6527/
Paul W. Mapp, “Atlantic History from Imperial, Continental, and Pacific Perspectives,”
The William and Mary Quarterly, 63:4 (Oct., 2006): 713-724 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
David J. Weber, “Exploitation, Contention, Rebellion,” in The Spanish Frontier in North
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992): 122-46 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Frederick W. Hodge and Theodore H. Lewis, ed., Spanish Explorers in the Southern
United States, 1528-1543: The Narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeca de Vaca; The Narrative of the
Expedition of Hernando de Soto by the Gentleman of Elvas; The Narrative of the Expedition of
Coronado, by Pedro de Castañeda (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1990).
Paul E. Hoffman, A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast
during the Sixteenth Century (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1990).
Charles Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the
South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997).
Jarald T. Milanich and Charles Hudson, Hernando de Soto and the Indians of Florida
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993).
Discussion Questions
What role does Catholicism play in the development of the southeast and southwest?
Why is it more successful in creating lasting relationships and networks in the southwest?
Was the Pueblo Revolt a religious or political uprising?
Compare/contrast Spanish colonization with early colonization by Britain.
~ 5 ~ As historians, how should we cope with the asymmetry in Native and European source
material for so much of history in the era of exploration and colonization?
How did racial relations develop differently in the colonial Southwest from the Southeast? Why?
Day 5: Friday, September 12: Canada and Iroquoisa
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 5.
William A. Starna and José António Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mahican War to the
Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern,” Ethnohistory, 51:4 (Fall 1994): 726-50 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
José António Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More”: Iroquois Policy Toward New
France and Its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in
the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).
Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” reconsidered (Toronto: McGill-Queens University Press, 1985).
Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British
North America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
Discussion Questions
Why are the Iroquois relatively successful in the seventeenth and eighteenth century
against their Indian rivals?
Why do the English colonies give so much attention to and project so much power on the
Iroquois?
Compare/contrast French colonization with early colonization by Britain.
Day 6: Monday, September 15: Virginia
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 6.
~ 6 ~ Martin H. Quitt, “Trade and Acculturation at Jamestown, 1607-1609: The Limits of Understanding,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 52:2 (1994): 227-58 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (Basic Books,
2005).
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000).
Peter C. Mancall, ed., The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in EighteenthCentury Virginia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
Simon P. Newman, A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the
British Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
Discussion Questions
Was the Jamestown settlement a religious venture? Should it be evaluated as such?
Why does slavery start in Virginia?
What role does capitalism have in the success of the Virginia settlement? Does this differ
significantly from European history at this time?
Day 7: Wednesday, September 17: Chesapeake Colonies
Readings
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 7.
Jack P. Greene, Review, Edmund Morgan, “American Slavery, American Freedom: The
Ordeal of Colonial Virginia,” Political Science Quarterly, 91:4 (Winter, 1976-1977): 742-743. (I
am not going to post this; locating it electronically should be a relatively simple exercise in using
the databases at Mudd Library. If you have problems, please let me know.)
Lois G. Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 34:4 (Oct. 1977):
542-71 (Blackboard).
~ 7 ~ Suggested Reading
Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” The Journal of
American History, 59:1 (Jun., 1972): 5-29 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century
Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1998).
Discussion Questions
Does Morgan’s Thesis have explanatory power in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries?
Compare/contrast the reasons for men and women coming to the New World? What are
the consequences of disproportionate sex ratios among immigrants?
Was Bacon’s Rebellion the first war for American independence? What should we make
of it in the larger American narrative?
How significant is the English Civil War in Chesapeake history? The Glorious Revolution?
What role does Catholicism play in Maryland before 1689? After?
Day 8: Friday, September 19: New England
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 8.
Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton (1637):
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/30-hut.html
Wendy Anne Warren, “‘The Cause of Her Grief’: The Rape of a Slave in Early New
England,” Journal of American History, 93:4 (2007): 1031-49 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
~ 8 ~ Francis J. Bremer, “Communications: The English Context of New England's Seventeenth-Century History,” New England Quarterly, 60:2 (June, 1987): 323-335 (Blackboard).
John Winthrop “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630):
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html
Banjamin C. Ray, “The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations in 1692 Salem Village,”
The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 65:3 (July, 2008): 449-478.
Carol F. Karlsen, “Salem Revisited,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 65:3 (July, 2008): 489-94.
Additional Reading
Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” in The Challenge
of the American Revolution (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976): 88-138.
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York:
Viking, 2006).
Stephen Innis, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton Inc., 1995).
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early
New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989).
Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
Discussion Questions
Some argue that American capitalism starts in New England: Why? Is this reasonable?
Why are mortality rates so much lower in New England in the seventeenth century than
in Virginia and Maryland?
Compare/contrast the impact of the British Civil War, Restoration, and Glorious Revolution on New England and the Chesapeake.
How should captive narratives from the 17th century be “read”?
What caused the New England witch trials? How do they fit into the American narrative?
Is the Salem Witch Trial a significant matter for historic study and analysis or merely a matter of
satisfying our prurient interests or sense of superiority?
~ 9 ~ Given Warren’s own concerns expressed at the end of her article, should we discount the
entire narrative?
Day 9: Monday, September 22: Puritans and Indians
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 9.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher, “’Our Sages are Sageles’: A Letter on Massachusetts Indian Policy
after King Philip’s War,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 58:2 (April 2001): 431-48
(Blackboard).
Submission of the Chief Sachem of the Narragansett to Charles I (1644) and Letter from
Pessicus and Conanicus to Massachusetts Bay Colony (May 24, 1644) from John Russell Bartlett, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation in New England,
vol.1 (Providence, RI, 1856): 134-38 (Blackboard). Suggested Reading
Francis Jennings, “Goals and Functions of Puritan Missions to the Indians,” Ethnohistory,
18:3 (Summer 1971): 197-212.
Jenny Hale Pulsipher, “‘Subjects . . . unto the Same King’: New England Indians and the
Use of Royal Political Power,” Massachusetts Historical Review, 5 (2003): 29-57.
Additional Reading
Russell Bourne, The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
(New York: Vintage Books, 1999).
David Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community Among
the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600 – 1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007).
Discussion Questions
Were Indian-Pilgrim relations initially based upon a racist model or did they involve an
initial respect of the other culture? If the latter, when and how does this change?
Why were the Natives ultimately unsuccessful in King Philip’s War? Was this inevitable?
How does the ideology of the English settlers change from 1620 to 1676? Why?
~ 10 ~ Day 10: Wednesday, September 24: The West Indies
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 10.
Keith Mason, “The Absentee Planter and the Key Slave: Privilege, Patriarchalism, and
Exploitation in the Early Eighteenth-Century Caribbean,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 70:1
(January 2013): 79-102 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Michael Craton, “Reluctant Creoles: The Planters’ World in the British West Indies,” in
Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the
First British Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991): 314-62 (Blackboard).
David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A
Reassessment,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 58:1 (2001): 17-47.
Discussion Questions
What is the significance of the West Indies sugar plantations to later developments in
American/British relations?
How did developing racial notions in England and the West Indies change the ideas of
race and class in America?
Given their great wealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, why did the economies of the West Indies decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?
Day 11: Friday, September 26: Carolina
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 11.
Cara Anzilotti, “Autonomy and the Female Planter in Colonial South Carolina,” Journal
of Southern History, 63:2 (May, 1997): 239-268 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
S. Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2011).
~ 11 ~ James Axtell, The Indians’ New South: Cultural Change in the Colonial Southeast (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997).
James H. Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1989).
Discussion Questions
Why do Carolina colonists seek to replace the proprietary government with Crown government? Compare the treatment of proprietary governments in the Middle Colonies.
Were the Carolina proprietors successful in controlling the Native peoples of Carolina?
Was this due to economic and technological dependence or other factors?
What are the environmental consequences of the Native trading system?
Why is Carolina successful in suppressing Spanish Florida?
Day 12: Monday, September 29: Middle Colonies
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 12.
Wayne Bodle, “The Fabricated Region: On the Insufficiency of ‘Colonies’ for Understanding American Colonial History,” Early American Studies 1:1 (2003): 1-27 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Evan Haefeli, “Revolt of the Long Swede: Transatlantic Hopes and Fears on the Delaware, 1669,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130:2 (April, 2006): 137-80.
Barry J. Levy, “‘Tender Plants’: Quaker Farmers and Children in the Delaware Valley,
1681-1735,” Journal of Family History, 3 (1978): 116-35.
Evan Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Systems of Violence in Colonial America,” in Michael A. Bellesiles, ed., Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New
York, 1999): 17-40.
Additional Reading
Patricia U. Bonomi and Eric Nooter, eds., Colonial Dutch Studies: An Interdisciplinary
Approach (New York: New York University Press, 1988).
~ 12 ~ James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for
Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois
and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600-1800 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1997).
Discussion Questions
What accounts for the relative success (given the nation’s size) of the Dutch in trade and
colonization?
Why are the Iroquois more successful in trading relations with the Dutch (and later the
English) than the River Indians?
Why were the Navigation Acts adopted by England? Did they serve as a good colonial
policy?
Why is Pennsylvania described as the “best poor man’s country?”
How does religious diversity affect the Middle Colonies?
Day 13: Wednesday, October 1: Revolutions
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 13.
Jack P. Greene, “Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American
Revolution,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 2, Eighteenth Century, ed. by P.J.
Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 208-30 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
K.G. Davies, “The Revolutions in America,” in The Revolutions of 1688, ed. by Robert
Beddard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991): 246-70.
Owen Stanwood, “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688-89, and
the Making of an Anglo-American Empire,” Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007): 481-508
(Blackboard).
Additional Reading
~ 13 ~ T.H. Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New
England, 1630-1730 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
Discussion Questions
Was anti-Catholicism or mismanagement at the bottom of James II’s loss of the thrown?
How did the Glorious Revolution affect political theory in America?
How do French-English continental wars affect the colonies in this period?
Day 14: Friday, October 3: The Atlantic
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 14.
T.H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the
Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present, 119 (May 1988): 73-104 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Vintage, 1976).
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1998).
Jack P. Green and J.R. Pole, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of
the Early Modern Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
David Richardson, “The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1680-1810,” in The
Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 2, Eighteenth Century, ed. by P.J. Marshall (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001): 440-464.
Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America, 6th ed. (Prentice Hall, 2009).
Discussion Questions
Can American history be properly understood outside of an Atlantic context?
How central is the issue of slavery to understanding American history?
Why does growing racial and ethnic diversity, in Taylor’s words, “increase[] the gap between freedom and slavery?”
~ 14 ~ How central is class conflict to developments in eighteenth century America? Is this period emblematic of Jefferson’s independent yeoman farmers?
How can we tell if women’s economic influence grows in this period, as Taylor suggests?
Compare/contrast racism involving Indians and African-Americans in this period (in
origin, manifestation, and effect).
Day 15: Monday, October 6: Awakenings
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 15.
Benjamin Franklin’s comments on George Whitefield (1739):
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text2/franklinwhitefield.pdf
(Blackboard)
Harry S. Stout, “George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin: Thoughts on a Peculiar
Friendship,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, 103 (1991): 9-23
(Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Frank Lambert, “‘Peddler in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Great Awakening,
1737-1745,” Journal of American History, 77 (1990): 812-37.
Additional Reading
Richard Bushman, The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 17401745 (New York: Atheneum, 1970).
Wesley M. Gewehr, The Great Awakening in Virginia, 1740-1790 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1930).
Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999).
Discussion Questions
Is the Great Awakening a coherent phenomenon of significance to American history or a
construct primarily of historians?
What role does the “awakening” have on political, economic, and racial issues in America? Does the Great Awakening contribute significantly to the democratization of America? If so,
how?
~ 15 ~ If the evangelicals of mid-century are, to some extent, social outcasts, how do they develop into the strongest religions of the early nineteenth century?
Day 16: Wednesday, October 8: French America
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 16.
Carl J. Ekberg, “Agriculture, ‘Mentalités’, and Violence on the Illinois Frontier,” Illinois
Historical Journal 88:2 (Summer 1995): 101-16 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
W.J. Eccles, “The Fur Trade and Eighteenth-Century Imperialism,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 40:3 (July, 1983): 342-362 (Blackboard).
Peter Moogk, “Reluctant Exiles: Emigrants from France in Canada before 1760,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 46:3 (1989): 463-505 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Carl J. Ekberg, French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic
History,” The American Historical Review 113:3 (June 2008):647-77.
W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, (East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 1998).
Discussion Questions
Why are there so few colonists in New France? Louisiana? Why do so many emigrants
return to France?
Why are the French more successful in their relations with Native Americans but less
successful in colonization than the British?
Day 17: Friday, October 10: The Great Plains
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 17.
~ 16 ~ Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Western Comanche Trade Center: Rethinking the Plains Indian
Trade,” Western Historical Quarterly, 29:4 (Winter, 1998): 485-513 (Blackboard)
Additional Reading
Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992).
Discussion Questions
Does the horse demonstrate the success of Native cultural adaptation or the failure?
Compare and contrast Native gender roles to Euro-American notions of gender.
Native culture in North America had been relatively classless. How does class develop
and how significant is it to Native culture in this period (and as American/Native relations develop)?
Day 18: Monday, October 13: The Pacific
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 19.
Suggested Reading
Julia G. Costell and David Hornbeck, “Alta California: An Overview,” in David Hurst
Thomas, ed., Columbian Consequences, vol. I, Archaeological and Historic Perspectives on the
Spanish Borderland West (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989): 303-32
(Blackboard).
Steven W. Hackel, “The Staff of Leadership: Indian Authority in the Missions of Alta
California,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 54:2 (April 1997): 347-76.
Glyndwr Williams, “The Pacific: Exploration and Exploitation,” in P.J. Marshall, ed.,
The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992): 552-75.
Discussion Questions
~ 17 ~ Why has the history of the Pacific Northwest and early California been slighted in our
understanding of American history?
How significant are colonial cultural influences in California? The Pacific Northwest?
Compare and contrast the efficacy of the California missions with missionary work in
New France, New England and the other English colonies.
Day 19: Wednesday, October 15: Imperial Crisis and War
Reading
Taylor, American Colonies, Chpt. 18.
Jack P. Greene, “Ongoing Disputes Over the Prerogative, 1763-1776,” in A Companion
to the American Revolution, ed. by Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (Blackwell Publishing, 2004):
173-78 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Brendan McConville, “The Passions of Empire,” in The King’s Three Faces: The Rise
and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill, 2004): 105-41 (Blackboard).
David Ammerman, “The Debate on Nonimportation: Why the Tories Failed,” in In the
Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774 (New York: W.W. Norton &
Co. Inc., 1974): 35-51.
Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis (New York: Collier
Books, 1965).
Frank D. Cogliano, “The Imperial Crisis,” in Revolutionary America: 1763-1815, 2nd ed.
(New York: Routledge, 2009): 49-75.
Additional Reading
Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: the Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British
North America, 1754-1766 (Vintage, 2001).
Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 1763 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British
Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
~ 18 ~ Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).
Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American
Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
Discussion Questions
Given its initial success, why does France lose the French and Indian War?
Vis-à-vis America, is the nature of the European conflict in the French and Indian War
fundamentally different from earlier French/English conflicts?
Is the pan-Indian movement successful in Pontiac’s Rebellion?
How does the French and Indian War contribute to the coming of the American Revolution?
Was America bearing its reasonable share of the total cost of “empire” in the 1760s?
Were differences between America and Britain primarily economic or political?
Americans are very proud to be “British citizens” at the end of the French and Indian
War. How does this “Britishness” change before the American Revolution?
What role does religion play in the coming of the American Revolution?
Day 20: Friday, October 17: Mid-term Exam
The examination may include multiple choice, a timeline, short answer, and an essay
question (grammar and writing count). Topics can include anything from the class discussions or the reading assignments.
Day 21: Monday, October 27: The American Revolution
Reading
T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising,” The Journal of American History, 84:1 (June 1997): 1339 (Blackboard).
Don Higginbotham, “The Military Origins of the Revolution,” in The War of American
Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice: 1763-1789 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983): 29-56 (Blackboard).
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (excerpts) (Blackboard)
~ 19 ~ Great Britain. Commissioners to Treat, Consult, and Agree upon the Means of Quieting
the Disorders Now Subsisting in Certain of the Colonies, Plantations, and Provinces in NorthAmerica, Manifesto and Proclamation (1778) (Blackboard)
Suggested Reading
Bernard Bailyn, “1776: A Year of Challenge – A World Transformed,” Journal of Law
and Economics, 19:3 (Oct. 1976): 437-66 (Blackboard)
Pauline Maier, “John Wilkes and American Disillusionment with Britain,” William and
Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 20:3 (Jul., 1963): 373-95.
Richard B. Morris, “The Two Revolutions,” in The American Revolution Reconsidered
(New York: Harper and Row, 1968): 43-91.
Bernard Bailyn, “Religion and Revolution: Three Biographical Studies,” Perspectives in
American History 4 (1970): 85-169.
Additional Reading
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War for Independence
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., Inc., 1969).
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage
Books, 1993).
John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976).
Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the
American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)
Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989).
Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and
the Struggle to Create America (Penguin Books, 2006).
~ 20 ~ Peter N. Carroll, ed., Religion and the Coming of the American Revolution (Waltham:
Ginn-Blaisdell, 1970).
Discussion Questions
Are British opposition politicians significant in the coming and ultimate success of the
American Revolution?
Is the American Revolution a class conflict? A religious war?
How successful are African Americans in exploiting the opportunities of the American
Revolution?
How significant is ideology to the coming and success of the American Revolution?
Could the American Revolution have been successful without the assistance of France?
As a people, what must we remember about the American Revolution?
Day 22: Wednesday, October 29: The Critical Period and the Constitution
Reading
The Articles of Confederation: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp
John Ferling, “So Much Unanimity and Goodwill,” in A Leap in the Dark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 281-313 (Blackboard).
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith, November 13, 1787. (This is the “tree
of liberty” letter: If you cannot find it readily on the web (from a reputable site), let me know.)
U.S. Constitution
The Federalist Papers, #10: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm
Patrick Henry, Speech at Virginia Ratifying Convention Opposing the Constitution, June
5, 1788 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Melancton Smith, Speech at New York State Ratifying Convention, June 21-22, 1788
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s37.html
Edward Countryman, “Confederation: State Governments and Their Problems,” in Jack
P. Greene and J.R. Pole, eds., A Companion to the American Revolution (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004): 362-73.
~ 21 ~ Mark D. Kaplanoff, “The Federal Convention and the Constitution,” in Jack P. Greene
and J.R. Pole, eds., A Companion to the American Revolution (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004):
470-81.
Edmund S. Morgan, “The ‘Critical Period,’” in The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977): 112-27.
Jack N. Rakove, “From One Agenda to Another: The Condition of American Federalism,
1783-1787,” in The American Revolution: Its Character and Limits, ed. by Jack P. Greene (New
York: New York University Press, 1987): 80-103.
Gordon S. Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution,” in
Richard Beeman, et. al., eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American
National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987): 69-109.
Additional Reading
Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New
York: Random House, 2009).
Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2010).
Robert A. Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993).
Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789 (New York: Harper & Row,
1987).
Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in
America, 1788-1828 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
Discussion Questions
Was the “Critical Period” critical or is this a reactionary rationalization?
Were the Shaysites American patriots abused by a reactionary class?
Evaluate the successes and failures of state governments as inheritors of the Revolution.
Were the differences causing tension in the union in the 1780s primarily sectional, classbased, religious, …?
~ 22 ~ Why is the mythology of the Constitution’s history so important in America today?
What is the significance of sectional differences in the 1780s and as the Constitution is
drafted? Are the larger fault-lines north-south or east-west? How significant is the Northwest
Ordinance in the Critical Period? Beyond?
Day 23: Friday, October 31: Early Republic, Formation of Parties, and Revolution of 1800
Reading
Peter S. Onuf, “The Revolution of 1800,” in Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000): 80-108 (Blackboard).
Kentucky Resolution (1799): http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/kenres.asp
Letter from George Washington to Patrick Henry, January 15, 1799 (Blackboard)
Bernard A. Weisberger, “John Jay’s Divisive Treaty, 1794-95,” in America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000): 138-59
(Blackboard).
Additional Reading:
Weisberger, America Afire.
Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1999).
Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order (New York: New York University
Press, 1984).
Discussion Questions
How does an aversion to “faction” develop into the political parties of the 1790s?
Are parties healthy or even necessary in a republic? Why has a two-party system tended
to dominate in America while most other developed democracies have multiple parties?
Was the Jefferson Revolution revolutionary?
~ 23 ~ American mythology has diversity as one of our greatest strengths. Have America’s successes been more dependent upon diversity or homogeneity?
Were the Francophiles of the 1790s defeated by political or economic considerations?
Given the results of his terms in office, does Washington deserve the encomiums that he
receives?
How should Hamilton be judged by history in light of his performance from 1789-1800?
Day 24: Monday, November 3: Jeffersonians, Pan-Indian Resistance, and War of 1812
Reading
Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) (excerpt) (Blackboard)
Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,”
Journal of the Early Republic 27:1 (Spring 2007): 1-34 (Blackboard).
Robert S. Allen, “His Majesty’s Indian Allies: Native Peoples, the British Crown and the
War of 1812,” Michigan Historical Review, 14:2 (Fall, 1988): 1-24 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Paul A. Gilje, “’Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights’: The Rhetoric of the War of 1812,”
Journal of the Early Republic 30:1 (Spring 2010): 1-23 (Blackboard).
Gregory E. Dowd, “Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac
and Tecumseh,” American Indian Quarterly, 16:3 (Summer, 1992): 309-35.
Lawrence Delbert Cress, “’Cool and Serious Reflection’: Federalist Attitudes Toward
War in 1812,” Journal of the Early Republic 7:2 (Summer 1987): 123-45.
Additional Reading:
Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Douglas Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American
Union, 1774-1804 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009).
Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for
Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
~ 24 ~ Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, &
Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010).
Discussion Questions
Why is Jefferson, a strict constructionist, willing to make the Louisiana Purchase without
a constitutional amendment?
Does America develop as a Jeffersonian Republic or as federalist nation?
Why is the War of 1812 sometimes referred to as the Second American Revolution? Does
that make sense? Is Alan Taylor’s description – The Civil War of 1812 – more reasonable?
Does the War of 1812 launch American western imperialism?
Is the Hartford Convention a serious threat?
What happens to Pan-Indianism in this period?
Day 25: Wednesday, November 5: The Era of Good Feelings and Rise of Jackson
Reading
Daniel Walker Howe, “An Era of Good and Bad Feelings,” in What God Hath Wrought:
The Transformation of America: 1815 - 1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009): 91124. (This book is available electronically through Mudd Library.)
Monroe Doctrine, 22-23, http://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=041/llac041.db&recNum=8
Monroe Doctrine, Office of the Historian, Department of State:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/monroe
Day 26: Friday, November 7: Jacksonian Democracy and the Second Party System
Reading
John Quincy Adams’ Inaugural Address:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/qadams.asp
Howe, “Jacksonian Democracy and the Rule of Law,” in What God Hath Wrought, 41145. (This book is available electronically through Mudd Library.)
Suggested Reading
~ 25 ~ Howe, “Andrew Jackson and His Age,” in What God Hath Wrought, 328-66.
Additional Reading
Michael F. Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of
Jackson to the Age of Lincoln: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Louisiana State
University Press, 1992).
Day 27: Monday, November 10: Market Revolution
Reading
James A. Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial America,” William
and Mary Quarterly, 35 (1978): 3-32 (Blackboard).
David Jaffee, “Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 17601860,” Journal of American History, 78:2 (September 1991): 511-35 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860 (New York: M.E.
Sharpe, 1977).
Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian American, 1815-1846 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994).
William H. Mulligan, Jr., The Shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1850-1880: The
Family During the Transition from Hand to Machine Labor (Edwin Mellen Press, 2006).
Charles W. McCurdy, The Anti-rent Era in New York Politics, 1839-1865 (University of
North Carolina Press, 2006).
Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Discussion Questions
How does the industrial revolution impact the lives of ordinary people? Politics? Culture?
Day 28: Wednesday, November 12: Expanding America: Mexican War
Reading
Howe, “The War Against Mexico,” in What God Hath Wrought, 744-91. (This book is
available electronically through Mudd Library.)
~ 26 ~ José Enrique de la Peña, excerpts from With Santa Anna in Texas (1836) (Blackboard)
John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review,
17 (July and August 1845): 5-10 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Brian DeLay, “Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War,” American Historical
Review 112 (2007): 35-68.
John C. Pinheiro, “’Religion Without Restriction’: Anti-Catholicism, All Mexico, and the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” Journal of the Early Republic 23:1 (Spring 2003): 69-96.
Additional Reading
Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Day 29: Friday, November 14: Gender
Reading
Seneca Falls Declaration: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/senecafalls.asp
Nancy Cott, “Introduction,” in The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New
England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977): 1-18 (Blackboard).
Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William
and Mary Quarterly, 44 (1987): 689-721 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Laura Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard (New York: Vintage Press, 1991).
Additional Reading
Carol Lasser and Stacey Robertson, Antebellum American Women: Private, Public, Partisan (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010).
Discussion Questions
How can we tell if women’s economic influence grows in this period?
~ 27 ~ Day 30: Monday, November 17: Religion, Reform, and American Culture
Reading
Paul E. Johnson, “Religion and Society: A Shopkeeper's Millennium,” The Wilson Quarterly, 3:2 (Spring, 1979): 86-95 (Blackboard).
Charles Gradison Finney, Revival in Rochester (1830):
http://www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/mem21.htm
Stephen Nissenbaum, “Revisiting ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas,’” in The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday (New York: Vintage, 1997): 4989 (Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991).
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1992).
Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (University
of North Carolina Press, 1998).
Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of
Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981).
Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New
York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
Discussion Questions
How do revivals relate to gender?
As a historian, how should we evaluate the development of various religions in this period? Can we separate the religious, cultural, political, and economic influences?
What forces encourage the movements toward reform, including abolitionism, temperance, Sunday schools, women’s rights, etc.?
Day 31: Wednesday, November 19: Social Change
Reading
~ 28 ~ Johann N. Neem, “Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History XXXIX:4 (Spring 2009): 471-95 (Blackboard).
Mary Hershberger, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against
Indian Remove in the 1830s,” The Journal of American History, 86:1 (June 1999): 15-40
(Blackboard).
Additional Reading
Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (Knopf,
1992).
Discussion Questions
If Neem is correct, what, if anything, has changed?
How should we evaluate the significance of failed social movements? Is all of this just an
effort to create agency where little existed?
Day 32: Friday, November 21: Sectionalism and the Problem of Slavery
Reading
Stephanie McCurry, “The Two Faces of Republicanism: Gender and Proslavery Politics
in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of American History, 78:4 (March 1992): 1245-64
(Blackboard).
Michael E. Woods, “’The Indignation of Freedom-Loving People’: The Caning of
Charles Sumner and Emotion in Antebellum Politics,” Journal of Social History, 44:3 (Spring
2011): 689-705 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Manisha Sinha, "The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age
of the Civil War," Journal of the Early Republic, 23 (Summer 2003): 233-62
Day 33: Monday, November 24: Sectionalism and the Problem of Slavery (continued)
Reading
Edward Pessen, "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and
South?" American Historical Review, 85 (Dec. 1980): 1119-49 (Blackboard).
~ 29 ~ Michael F. Holt, “The New Political History and the Civil War,” in Political Parties and
American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1992): 291-302 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Marc Egnal, "The Beards Were Right: Parties in the North, 1840-1860," Civil War History, 47 (March 2001): 30-56 (Blackboard)
Stephanie M.H. Camp, “The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861,” Journal of Southern History 68:3 (August 2002): 53372 (Blackboard).
Jeff Forret, “Conflict and the ‘Slave Community’: Violence among Slaves in Upcountry
South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 70:3 (August 2008): 783-824.
Additional Reading
William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, Vol. 1
(Oxford University Press, 1990).
William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861, Vol.
2 (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (Wesleyan University Press,
1988).
James Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the
Economic Origins of the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (Oxford University Press,
1981).
Gary J. Kornblith, "Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual
Exercise," Journal of American History 90 (June 2003): 76-105.
Day 34: Wednesday, November 26: Sectionalism and the Problem of Slavery
Reading
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1-128.
Day 35: Monday, December 1: Civil War
Reading
~ 30 ~ Edward Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005): 131-144
(Blackboard).
Gary W. Gallagher, “Popular Will,” in The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997): 17-59 (Blackboard)
Lincoln, Cooper Union Address (1860)
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm
Sumner, Crimes Against Kansas Speech (1856) (excerpts)
http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Crime.html
Suggested Reading
Lincoln, Speech on Repeal of Missouri Compromise (1854) (excerpts)
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~njumonvi/Lincoln-Missouri.html
Mark J. Stegmaier, “An Ohio Republican Stirs Up the House: The Blake Resolution of
1860 and the Politics of Sectional Crisis in Congress,” Ohio History, 116 (2009): 62-87.
William L. Barney, “Society Resisting the Republicans: Georgia's Secession Debate,” Review
Essay, Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in I860, by William W. Freehling; Craig M. Simpson,
The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 77:1 (Spring 1993): 71-85 (Blackboard).
Gallagher, “Introduction,” in The Confederate War, 3-13.
Day 36: Wednesday, December 3: Civil War (continued)
Reading
Drew Gilpin Faust, “Killing: ‘The Harder Courage,’” in This Republic of Suffering:
Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2008): 32-60 (Blackboard).
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
Lincoln’s, Second Inaugural Address
I have not provided links for these four documents. They should be easy for you to locate on the
web. Do be cognizant, however, of the source for the document you read. Is it reputable? (You
can usually, although not always, be confident in an .edu or .gov website; and many .com websites are perfectly acceptable.)
~ 31 ~ Day 37: Friday, December 5: Reconstruction
Reading
Harry S. Stout, “Afterward,” in Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006): 457-461 (Blackboard)
Heather Cox Richardson, “Introduction” and “A New Middle Ground,” in West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2007): 1-7, 121-47 (Blackboard)
President Johnson’s Declaration of Amnesty in 1865, at, e.g.,
https://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116918
Suggested Reading
James M. McPherson, “The Second American Revolution,” in Abraham Lincoln and the
Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 3-22 (Blackboard)
Day 38: Monday, December 8: Reconstruction (continued)
Reading
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Michael P. Zuckert, “Completing the Constitution: The Fourteenth Amendment and Constitutional Rights,” Publius, 22:2 (Spring 1992): 69-91 (Blackboard).
Michael Kent Curtis, “Introduction” in No State Shall: The Fourteenth Amendment and
the Bill of Rights (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986): 1-17 (Blackboard).
Suggested Reading
Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34.1 (Spring 2003): 726 (Blackboard).
Day 39: Wednesday, December 10
Scheduled visit to the exhibit “Life and Art in Early America” at the Allen Memorial Art
Museum.
Day 40: Friday, December 12: Catch-up and Review
~ 32 ~