BUILDING
THE AMERICAN NATION:
THE U.S., 1789-1920
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| Seminars |
In
each term there will be five hour-long primary document
discussion
seminars. Students
taking the full course must attend all ten; one-term
affiliates must
attend all five in the term they're here.
It
is essential to prepare for each
seminar by reading all the primary sources in advance. The
list on the right shows you what you will probably be expected
to read for each seminar. All these documents are also
in
the
Document booklet that accompanies the course. Please
note that your seminar teacher may suggest alternative
or additional readings.
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Slavery
and the Founding Fathers (Week 3)
Debates in the Constitutional
Convention about the slave trade
Exchange of letters
between Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson, 1791
Thomas
Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820 |
The
Market Revolution (week 4)
The Working Men's
Declaration of Indpendence, 1829
Henry Niles, "Morality
of Manufactures," Niles Weekly Register (1823)
An account of the Cotton
Boom in Alabama and Mississippi
Opinion of Chief Justice
Taney in the Charles River Bridge Company case (1837) |
Political
culture in the antebellum republic (week 5)
1824 Election cartoon
A
campaign biography supporting Andrew Jackson, 1828
Andrew Jackson on
the Bank issue and Henry Clay on the tariff
John O'Sullivan, statement of principles
from "The Democratic Review" (1837) |
Pro-slavery
thought and abolitionism (week 7)
William Lloyd Garrison,
editorial from the first issue of The Liberator, Jan 1,
1831
Frederick Douglass, "What
to the slave is the fourth of July?", speech, July 4, 1852
John
C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” (Speech
in the US Senate, 1837) |
Manifest
Destiny and the debate over slavery's expansion (week 8)
Thomas
Hart Benton on white supremacy,
1846
John L. O'Sullivan, "The Great Nation of Futurity", Democratic
Review, 1839
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois 1854
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Secession
and the Confederate Republic (week 12)
South Carolina Ordinance
of Secession
Speech in favour of secession in
the Alabama convention, Jan. 11, 1861
Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone
Speech", March 1861 |
Emancipation
(week 13)
Hannah
Johnson to President Lincoln, 31 July 1863
James H. Gooding to President Lincoln,
28 September, 1863
Three reactions to the Emancipation
Proclamation
Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle
Hymn of the Republic" |
The
"failure" of Reconstruction (week
14)
Diary of a Freedman's Bureau
Agent
Thaddeus
Stevens on black suffrage, 1867
A "Liberal Republican" on
the South Carolina Legislature(1874)
A Democratic view of
the 15th Amendment
Klan violence in Georgia, 1871
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Immigration, "whiteness" and
national identity (week 17)
Theodore Roosevelt on
assimilation
Francis A. Walker, "Restriction
of Immigration," The Atlantic Monthly; June, 1896 |
Populism
(week 18)
People's Party
Omaha Platform 1892
Why I Became a Populist, by Lorenzo
Lewelling |
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