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
9. The Twenties
10. Depression and New Deal: 1929-1939
14. The Sixties
Chapter 1: The Colonial Era
the Columbian Exchange; syphilis and the Columbian Exchange
Mannahatta Project: see NYC before it was NYC; the ecology of Jamestown
English thoughts about Virginia colonization; Lawes Divine, Moral, and Martial; (a fuller version); Jill Lepore on John Smith; legal cases involving indentured servitude; a letter from an indentured servant, 1623; an indenture contract, 1683; Powhatan, speech to John Smith (1609); checklist for Virginia-bound colonists; the spread of tobacco
Mayflower Compact (1620); Winthrop: A Modell of Christian Charity (1630); Student Handbook from Patrick Henry College; Winthrop: What Warrant Have We to Take That Land? (1629); recent evidence that Winthrop may never have delivered the "Christian Charity" sermon
layout of a typical Puritan town; historian Peter Carroll on Puritans and the wilderness
Waldman, excerpts from Founding Faith; play some Colonial House games (dress-up! survival quiz! and more)
why don't Americans go to church that much? Because they're doing CrossFit
reactions to the Pequot War (1637); primary sources on the war; on captivity narratives
on Native Americans: cure by lacrosse; on natives and capitalism; "On the Good Things Which are Found among the Indians"
the trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637); Roger Williams, The Hireling Ministry (1652); Roger Williams, "The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution" (1644); historian Francis Bremer on their cases
Harvard fundraising letter, 1643; The Old Deluder Act (1647)
Massachusetts sumptuary law (1651); general court synod's jeremiad (1679)
Maryland Toleration Act (1649); William Penn, "First Frame of Government" (1682); England's Toleration Act (1689)
should Father Serra be canonized?
Howard Zinn on Bacon's Rebellion; a shorter version
Vaughan on the origins of slavery; South Carolina slave code, 1740; excerpts from the 18th-c diary of Virginia planter William Byrd; New-York Historical Society's "Slavery in NYC" exhibit; map of the slave trade and African commerce and culture
Anne Bradstreet, Two Poems on Family Life, 1650; Wadsworth, A Well-Ordered Family (1712)
Metacom (King Philip), complaints about English settlers, 1675
Selections from the New England Primer, 1683
Norton, "The Years of Magical Thinking" (on the Salem Witch Trials); historian James Morone on Puritan thinking about Indians and witches; epidemological map, showing how witchcraft accusations spread like disease; testimony from the trials
Franklin, A Receipt to Make a New England Funeral Elegy (1722); Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (1749); Franklin, excerpt from a letter, 1758
libel trial of John Peter Zenger in NYC, 1733
the British are still paying off their debt from 1720!
Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741); for a modern comparison, look at how much more religious leaders' followers interact on Twitter than do celebrities' followers; great source of First Great Awakening sermons
Ellis, His Excellency, excerpt on French & Indian War; Fred Anderson on the Albany Congress
confused about all those different religious denominations? look at this chart