header by Emerson Taymor, 2005


1. The Colonial Era: 1607-1763

2. The Revolutionary Era: 1763-1789

3. The Early National Period: 1789-1824

4. Jacksonian America: 1824-1848

5. Antebellum America: 1848-1860

6. The Civil War Era: 1861-1877

7. The Gilded Age: 1877-1901

8. Progressivism: 1901-1920

9. The Twenties

10. Depression and New Deal: 1929-1939

11. World War II: 1939-1945

12. Early Cold War: 1945-1963

13. Social Ferment: 1945-1960

14. The Sixties

15. The Seventies and After

 

 

 


Jacksonian America: 1824-1848

ANDREW JACKSON AND JACKSONIAN POLITICS

Jackson, First Annual Message to Congress (1829); Jackson, Second Annual Message to Congress (1830); Bank Veto message (1832)

Cherokee Nation brief history of the Trail of Tears; Natives respond to Jackson (1828, 1830); Letter from Cherokee Chief John Ross, protesting the Treaty of New Echota; Statement of the National Council of the Cherokees (1838); two descriptions of life along the Trail of Tears; William Apess explains the Native experience to white Americans (1833); opposition to removal of the Cherokees, from David Mayers, Dissenting Voices in America's Rise to Power; map of the Trail of Tears

historian Theda Perdue links Indian Removal to ethnic cleansing; video lecture by Claudio Saunt, "The War the Slaveholders Won: Indian Removal and the State of Georgia"; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, "Commander and Chief": on Andrew Jackson's policies toward natives and America's denial of its colonial past, from An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States; Caleb Gayle, "The Black Americans Suing to Reclaim Their Native American Identity," Guardian (Oct. 2018); Jeffrey Ostler, "An Icy River and a Raging Sea," introduction to Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas; Ostler, "Civilization or Removal?"

historians Robert Remini and Anthony F.C. Wallace debate the motivations for Jackson's removal policy; David Cole, "The Age of Jackson After Forty Years," Reviews in American History (1986)

attack ads in the 1828 election; a cartoon about mass politics today; a broader article on the topic: Libby Copeland, "Stuck In the Muck: Mudslinging Isn't New. Here's the Messy Truth" (2008); an op-ed calling for more such political attacks, by a UHS alum; historian Daniel Feller on Andrew Jackson's shifting legacy and importance; Jacksonianism, voting, and race; Davy Crockett, Advice to Politicians (1833)

historian Sean Wilentz on the Whigs as the ancestors of today's Christian Right; historian Jill Lepore on why the Whigs might actually be the heroes of the Jacksonian period; Daniel Walker Howe on his book What Hath God Wrought; Wilentz vs. Howe interpretations; Bruce Kraig, "The Election That Defined What 'Real Americans' Ate and Drank"; "What Really Killed William Henry Harrison?" New York Times (2014)

Manisha Sinha on civil rights and voting restrictions during the Jacksonian era

THE MARKET REVOLUTION

topic outline of the Market Revolution

Supreme Court rulings on "The Corporation as an Artificial Being," (1809, 1844); Bhu Srinivasan, "Cotton," from Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism (2017); map of the Erie Canal; Thomas Woodcock travels the Erie Canal (1836)

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Rise of an Industrial Aristocracy (1831); John Scholefield, A Whig discusses how to appeal to the working man (1833); Journeyman Tailors Protest Wage Slavery (1836); University of Indiana course catalogue, 1829

Charles Dickens describes Americans eating, 1843

Harriet Martineau, Morals of Manufactures (1837); a plea for manufacturing in the South, 1827; cover page of the Lowell Offering (1840); "Song of the Spinners" from the Lowell Offering (1841); Jessie Hutchinson, "Cordwainers' Rallying Song" (1844); letter from the Lowell mills, 1844; daguerreotype of Lowell mill girls, 1845

Freeman Hunt, "The Ups and Downs of Business" (1856)

Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt, "How Silicon Valley Breeds Boredom, Loneliness and Vanity," Washington Post (October 2019)--how new technologies, going back to the Market Revolution, have kept us apart; Andy Newman, "I Found Work on an Amazon Website. I Made 97 Cents an Hour," New York Times (Nov. 2019); "base ball" players meet to agree on rules for the national pastime, "a manly and healthful exercise...full of excitement and rendering the body lithe and hardy," New York Herald (1857)

REFORM MOVEMENTS

timeline and comparison of reform movements

Emma Willard, "Female Education" (1819)

map of the Burned-Over district; John A. Martin, "An Overview of the Burned-Over District," from Saints, Sinners, and Reformers: The Burned Over District Re-Visited (2005)

Scale of Temperance (1828); T.S. Arthur, from Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854) (temperance novel)

Charles Grandison Finney, "Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts" (1836); a study of Sylvester Graham, health reformer; a journalist describes his experience with Fletcherism

Nicholas Kristof on end-time prophecy (2004)

sayings of Emerson and Thoreau; Walt Whitman, "I Hear America Singing" (with additional versions by Langston Hughes and Julia Alvarez)

utopian communities: review of Shakerism, from Crossroads Project; The Shakers, membership rules (#1-6, 28-29); Oneida: John Humphrey Noyes, "Bible Communism" (1845, 1849); Robert Owen, "Plan for the Permanent Relief of the Working Classes" (1822) (read pp. 2-3, look at chart on pp.5-6); Brook Farm: plan of the community (1842); The Philosophy of Brook Farm

utopian communities today

Alexis de Tocqueville on slavery; William Lloyd Garrison on David Walker's Appeal; historian Edmund Morgan, "Plantation Blues": from The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America (2004); abolitionism's most successful image, the slave ship Brookes; support for and opposition for African-American Colonization of Africa (1829, 1834); manifesto of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833); Kathleen Bachynski, "American Medicine Was Built on the Backs of Slaves--and It Still Affects How We Treat Patients Today," Washington Post (June 2018)

Tony Horwitz, "Untrue Confessions" (about why our memory of Nat Turner may be wrong) (1999); Afrocentric critic Molefi Kete Asante on "The Real Nat Turner" (2000); Calvin Schermerhorn, from Unrequited Toil (2016) on rebellions by enslaved people before 1822; rebellions between 1822-31 (Denmark Vesey-Nat Turner)

James Oakes on African-American abolitionists' belief in the founding documents, from The Crooked Path to Abolition

Fanny Kemble, Women in slavery (1839); excellent resource on the anti-slavery debate in England and America; on religion and slavery: Biblical passages supporting and condemning slavery; documents from the feminist movement: Maria Stewart, the Grimke sisters, Sojourner Truth; Catharine Beecher on domesticity, from Treatise on Domestic Economy (1842); Maria Stewart, "Why Ye Sit Here and Die?" (1832); Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments (1848)

Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860" (1966)

reading and assessing the Declaration of Sentiments

EXPANSIONISM

quotations on US expansion; John Havard, "How Anti-Spanish Bias Justified 19th-Century American Expansionism," Zócalo Public Square(July 2018)

Stephen F. Austin on Texas (1836); Texas declaration of independence (1836)

full section on the Mexican War from Foner, Give Me Liberty

Abraham Lincoln attacks Polk's speech on Texas (1846)

Manuel Crescencio Rejón, "Observations on the Treaty of Guadelupe" (1848); John C. Calhoun explains why America should not annex Mexico (1848); Jose Vasconcelos, "The Tragedy of California" (1944)

The Gold Rush: Stephen Magagnini, "Fortune Smiled on Many Black Miners" (Sacramento Bee, 1998); Magagnini, "Chinese Transformed Gold Mountain" (1998); Magagnini, "Indians' Misfortune Was Stamped in Gold" (1998); Sam Stanton, "On Your Mark, Get Set, Gold" (on miners) (1998); Kathryn Perkins, "'Real Women' Who Defied Stereotype" (women and the Gold Rush, 1998); Lizzie Stark, "How a War Over Eggs Marked the Early History of San Francisco"

Daniel Webster on slavery in the West (1850); David Stannard, "Pestilence and Genocide," on the genocide of Native Americans in California, from American Holocaust

Norman Asing protests prejudice against the Chinese to the Daily Alta California (1852); map of SF, 1853 (see which businesses were where!); Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, on American attitudes toward China in the 19th century, from A New History of Asian America (2014); Michael Luo, "America Was Eager for Chinese Immigrants. What Happened?," New Yorkers (Aug. 2021)

El Clamor Público condemns the first race riot in California, against Mexican citizens in Los Angeles (1856); Veronica Torrejón, "A 'Mexican Window' into the City's Past," LA Times (2005): on El Clamor Público, Los Angeles' first Spanish-language newspaper; academic article on the subject: Lawrence Guillow, "Pandemonium in the Plaza: The First Los Angeles Riot, July 22, 1856," Southern California Quarterly (1995)