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PART I - COLONIAL
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| Aug. 18 (R) |
Introduction |
| Aug. 23 (T) |
Lecture: Native Peoples
Reading: Nation of Nations, 11-15
Questions: Who were the earliest Americans? When and how did they get here? How would you characterize pre-Columbian Americans?
Terms: Clovis Theory, Kennewick Man/Spirit Caveman, agricultural revolution, "Columbian exchange"
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| Aug. 25 (R) |
Lecture: Europe on the Eve
Reading: Nation of Nations, 6-11, 15-22
Images: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Questions: Why did Europe "discover" America? Why does the question mean so much?
Terms: counterfactual history, megafauna, domestication of plants, domestication of animals, conquistadors, Cortes, Pizarro, Moctezuma, Atahuallpa, Black Legend
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| Aug. 30 (T) |
Lecture: Settling British North America
Reading: Nation of Nations, 34-50, 64-74
Questions: What are the primary factors shaping the early development of Britain's North American colonies? What were the objectives of England's early explorers and settlers? What are, and how would you explain, the distinguishing characteristics of the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies?
Terms: Americanization/Anglicization, Jamestown, Virginia Company, headright system, tobacco, Puritanism, Separatists/Non-Separatists
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| Sept. 1 (R) |
Lecture: The Origins of Slavery in America
Reading: Nation of Nations, 51-56, 101-105
Questions: Why did slavery take root in British North America? What are the defining characteristics of slavery as it evolved there? How does it compare to slavery elsewhere?
Terms: indentured servitude, Anthony Johnson / James Casur, slave codes
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| Sept. 6 (T) |
Discussion: The Witchcraft Crisis
Reading: Reserve reading (html)
Questions: What is the thesis of each excerpt in the Reserve Reading? What is the significance of the crisis in Salem and what does it suggest about seventeenth-century America?
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| Sept. 8 (R) |
Lecture: North America at 1750
Reading: Nation of Nations, 37, 43, 85-88, 105-115
Questions: What was the relationship (in theory and practice) between the mother country and the colonies? Economically, did the colonies thrive within the British empire, or did they flounder? Politically, did the colonists enjoy considerable freedom, or did they find oppression? Were the colonies democratic?
Terms: mercantilism, navigation acts, "benign neglect," monarchy/aristocracy/democracy
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| Sept. 13 (T) |
Lecture: French and Indian War
Reading: Nation of Nations, 115-16, 121-26
Questions: What were the dominant characteristics of New France? How did Native American societies adjust to the presence of Europeans? What were the consequences of those adjustments? What were the causes and consequences of the French and Indian War?
Terms: Seven Years War, New France, William Pitt
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| Sept. 15 (R) |
Discussion: The Stamp Act Controversy
Reading: Nation of Nations, 126-134; Reserve Reading
Questions: How did Americans and Englishmen view the Stamp Act controversy from different perspectives? Why were so many Americans so quickly transformed from happy Britons to rebellious colonists?
Terms: Pontiac's Rebellion, Proclamation Line, Sugar Act, Stamp Act
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| Sept. 20 (T) |
Lecture: Coming of the American Revolution
Reading: Nation of Nations, 134-44
Questions: By what steps (cultural, psychological, intellectual) were Americans transformed from loyal British subjects into revolutionaries?
Terms: Proclamation of 1763, Sugar Act, Quartering Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Tea Act, Coercive Acts, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Olive Branch Petition, hessians, Concord, Lexington
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| Sept. 22 (R) |
FIRST EXAM |
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PART II - ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
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| Sept. 27 (T) |
Lecture: Republicanism and the War of Independence
Reading: Nation of Nations, 147-170; begin Celia
Questions: For what ideals did Americans fight? Did those ideals make it more difficult for them to win this war? What are the important turning points in this war? Did Americans win, or did the British lose, or did the French win it for the Americans?
Terms: Continental Congress / Continental Army, George Washington, Battle of Bunker Hill, Battles of Trenton & Princeton, Franco-American alliance, Battle of Yorktown
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| Sept. 29 (R) |
Lecture: Confederation to Constitution
Reading: Nation of Nations, 173-199
Questions: Why did Americans abandon the Confederation for the Constitution? What controversies at the Constitutional Convention shaped the document the founders created? Was the Constitution a logical response to the Confederation period or a repudiation of the Revolution's ideals?
Terms: Articles of Confederation, the "Great Compromise," 3/5 Clause, Electoral College, Federalists/Antifederalists
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| Oct. 4 (T) |
Lecture: Federalists and Republicans
Reading: Nation of Nations, 208-220, 226-232
Questions: What controversies gave rise to the first American party system? What ideals and policies did the two parties come to represent? Did the triumph of the Jeffersonians in the election of 1800 represent a "revolution of 1800"?
Terms: Washington's Farewell Address, Hamilton's treasury reports, Whiskey Rebellion, Federalists / Jeffersonian Republicans, "revolution of 1800," Louisiana Purchase
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| Oct. 6 (R) |
Lecture: Jefferson's DNA
Reading: Joseph J. Ellis, "Jefferson: Post-DNA" (pdf)
Questions: How would you sketch Thomas Jefferson's character? How does Thomas Jefferson symbolize white America's conflicted attitudes toward race?
Terms: Sally Hemings
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| Oct. 11 (T) |
Lecture: Economic and Political Revolution
Reading: Nation of Nations, 244-48, 256-70, 287-94
Questions: What were the causes and consequences of the War of 1812? How would you describe the transformation of the American economy after the war? How was Andrew Jackson both a product and a producer of the new mass party politics?
Terms: War of 1812, Battle of New Orleans, Eli Whitney, internal improvements, Erie Canal, Robert Fulton
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| Oct. 13 (R) |
NO CLASS -- MID-SEMESTER BREAK
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| Oct. 18 (T) |
Lecture: Jacksonian Democracy
Reading: Nation of Nations, 294-300
Questions: How was America's inward and westward turn reflected in literature and art? What was the Trail of Tears? In what ways was Indian removal central to white America's history and psychology?
Terms: Andrew Jackson, Trail of Tears, James Fenimore Cooper, Hudson River School, Southwestern Humor, Davy Crockett, Manifest Destiny
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| Oct. 20 (R) |
Discussion: Celia (writing assignment)
Reading: finish Melton McLaurin's Celia
Questions and Terms: see Writing Assignment instructions
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| Oct. 25 (T) |
Discussion: Celia
Reading: Melton McLaurin's Celia
Questions and Terms: Writing Assignment instructions
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| Oct. 27 (R) |
SECOND EXAM
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PART III - CIVIL WAR AMERICA
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| Nov. 1 (T) |
Lecture: The Reform Impulse
Reading: Nation of Nations, 313-322, 324-337
Questions: Why is the antebellum period marked by a burst of reform activity? What are the primary reform movements of the period, and what was their focus? How might this reform activity have contributed to growing sectional tensions?
Terms: Second Great Awakening, Seneca Falls Convention, temperance movement, Nat Turner, abolitionism, Oneida Community
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| Nov. 3 (R) |
Library Assignment
Reading: none
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| Nov. 8 (T) |
Lecture: American Renaissance
Reading: Nation of Nations, 322-24; Major Authors Handout (pdf)
Questions: What was the American Renaissance? Who were its major figures? How did it represent a declaration of cultural independence for America? What were its major themes?
Terms: Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, romanticism
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| Nov. 10 (R) |
Lecture: Sectionalism
Reading: Nation of Nations, 342-53, 364-67, 379-83
Questions: Why by the 1850s had slavery come under such sustained and relentless attack in the North? How did the Southern defense of slavery change over time? What was the South's critique of the North?
Terms: Free Soil Party, Black Republicanism, Slave Power, cotton kingdom, Upper South, Lower South, yeomen, planters
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| Nov. 15 (T) |
Lecture: Road to Secession
Reading: Nation of Nations, 390-94, 397-422
Questions: How did the major crises of the 1850s acclimate the nation to violence as a solution to sectional problems?
Terms: fugitive slave law, Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Bleeding Kansas," Charles Sumner, Dred Scott, John Brown, fire-eaters, Election of 1860, secession
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| Nov. 17 (R) |
Lincoln, Slavery, and Race (writing assignment due)
Reading: Reserve Reading
Questions: see handout
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| Nov. 22 (T) |
Lecture: The Civil War
Reading: Nation of Nations, 425-438, 446-456
Questions: What advantages and disadvantages did each side enjoy? What are the primary events and turning points in the Civil War that decided the outcome and shaped the postwar period?
Terms: Emancipation Proclamation, Battle of Antietam, Battles of Gettysburg/Vicksburg, election of 1864
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| Nov. 24 (R) |
NO CLASS -- HAPPY THANKSGIVING
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| Nov. 29 (T) |
Lecture: Civil War & Reconstruction
Reading: Nation of Nations, 438-47, 459-66
Questions: Why was the Civil War longer and more bloody than most had expected? What questions did it answer? What questions did it leave unanswered? How did Johnson answer them?
Terms: Claude Minie, rifled muskets, modern war, total war, Andrew Johnson, Presidential Reconstruction, black codes
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| Dec. 1 (R) |
Lecture: The Legacy of War and Reconstruction
Reading: Nation of Nations, 466-482; Reserve Reading
Questions: How did the war impact the nation? Did Reconstruction radically transform the South?
Terms: 13th, 14th, & 15th amendments, Frederick Douglass
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| Dec. 6 or 8 |
THIRD EXAM
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