America Past and Present, Volume 1

Designed for introductory-level survey courses in American History. America Past and Presentintegrates the social and political dimensions of American history into one rich chronological narrative, providing students with a full picture of the scope and complexity of the American past. Written in a lively narrative style by award-winning historians,America Past and Presenttells the story of all Americans-elite and ordinary, women and men, rich and poor, white majority and minorities. The authors, all active, publishing, and award-winning historians, bring history to life for introductory students inAmerica Past and Present.

Robert A. Divine

Robert A. Divine, George W. Littlefield Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1954. A specialist in American diplomatic history, he taught from 1954 to 1996 at the University of Texas, where he was honored by both the student association and the graduate school for teaching excellence. His extensive published work includes The Illusion of Neutrality (1962); Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (1967); and Blowing on the Wind (1978). His most recent work is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2000), a comparative analysis of twentieth-century American wars. He is also the author of Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981) and editor of three volumes of essays on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His book, The Sputnik Challenge (1993), won the Eugene E. Emme Astronautical Literature Award for 1993. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has given the Albert Shaw Lectures in Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University.

 

T. H. Breen

T. H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History at North­ western Uni­ versity, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. He has taught at Northwestern since 1970. Breen’s major books include The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (1974); Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (1980); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); and, with Stephen Innes of the University of Virginia, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1980). His Imagining the Past (1989) won the 1990 Historic Preservation Book Award. His most recent book is Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004). In addition to receiving several awards for outstanding teaching at Northwestern, Breen has been the recipient of research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. He has served as the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University (1987—1988), the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University (1990—1991), the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (2000—2001), and was a recipient of the Humboldt Prize (Germany). He is currently completing a book tentatively entitled America ’s Insurgency: The People’s Revolution, 1774—1776.

 

George M. Fredrickson

George M. Fredrickson is Edgar E. Robinson Professor Emeritus of United States History at Stanford Uni­ versity. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Inner Civil War (1965), The Black Image in the White Mind (1971), and White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (1981), which won both the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award from Phi Beta Kappa and the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians. His most recent books are Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (1995); The Comparative Imagination: Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (1997); and Racism: A Short History (2002). He received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowships, and a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. Before coming to Stanford in 1984, he taught at Northwestern. He has also served as Fulbright lecturer in American History at Moscow University and as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. He served as president of the Organization of American Historians in 1997—1998.

 

R. Hal Williams

R. Hal Williams is professor of history at Southern Methodist University. He received his A.B. from Prince­ ton Uni­ versity in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Yale Uni­ versity in 1968. His books include The Democratic Party and California Politics, 1880—1896 (1973); Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (1978); and The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (1990). A specialist in American political history, he taught at Yale University from 1968 to 1975 and came to SMU in 1975 as chair of the Department of History. From 1980 to 1988, he served as dean of Dedman College, the school of humanities and sciences, at SMU, where he is currently dean of Research and Graduate Studies. In 1980, he was a visiting professor at University College, Oxford University. Williams has received grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he has served on the Texas Committee for the Humanities. He is currently working on a study of the presidential election of 1896 and a biography of James G. Blaine, the late-nineteenth-century speaker of the House, secretary of state, and Republican presidential candidate.

 

Ariela J. Gross

Ariela J. Gross is Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern Cali­ fornia. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (2000) and ­ numerous law review articles and book chapters, including “‘Caucasian Cloak’: Mexican Americans and the Politics of Whiteness in the Twentieth-Century Southwest” in the Georgetown Law Journal (2006). Her current work in progress, What Blood Won’t Tell: Racial Identity on Trial in America, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council for Learned Societies.

 

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous works of history and ­ international affairs, including The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993), Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East (1994), The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (1995), TR: The Last Romantic (a biography of Theodore Roosevelt) (1997), What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (1998), The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), The Strange Death of American Liberalism (2001), The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002), Woodrow Wilson (2003), and Andrew Jackson (2005). His writing has received critical and popular acclaim; The First American was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller. He lectures frequently across North America and in Europe. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Atlantic Monthly. He is a regular guest on radio and television, and has participated in several historical documentary films.

Brief Contents

Chapter 1

New World Encounters 

Chapter 2

New World Experiments: England’s Seventeenth-Century Colonies 

Chapter 3

Putting Down Roots: Opportunity and Oppression in Colonial Society 

Chapter 4

Experience of Empire: Eighteenth-Century America 

Chapter 5

The American Revolution: From Elite Protest to Popular Revolt, 1763—1783 

Chapter 6

The Republican Experiment 

Chapter 7

Democracy and Dissent: The Violence of Party Politics, 1788—1800 

Chapter 8

Republican Ascendancy: The Jeffersonian Vision 

Chapter 9

Nation Building and Nationalism 

Chapter 10

The Triumph of White Men’s Democracy  

Chapter 11

Slaves and Masters 

Chapter 12

The Pursuit of Perfection 

Chapter 13

An Age of Expansionism 

Chapter 14

The Sectional Crisis 

Chapter 15

Secession and the Civil War 

Chapter 16

The Agony of Reconstruction

 

Detailed Contents

Chapter 1

NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS

Clash of Cultures: Interpreting Murder in Early Maryland

Native American Histories before Conquest

The Environmental Challenge: Food, Climate, and Culture

Mysterious Disappearances

Aztec Dominance

Eastern Woodland Cultures

A World Transformed

Cultural Negotiations

Threats to Survival: Trade and Disease

West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies

Europe on the Eve of Conquest

Building New Nation States

Imagining a New World

Myths and Reality

The Conquistadores: Faith and Greed

From Plunder to Settlement

The French Claim Canada

The English Enter the Competition

Birth of English Protestantism

Militant Protestantism

Woman in Power

Religion,War, and Nationalism

An Unpromising Beginning: Mystery at Roanoke

Conclusion: Campaign to Sell America

_ FEATURE ESSAY

The Columbian Exchange and the Global Environment:

Ecological Revolution

Chapter 2

NEW WORLD EXPERIMENTS: ENGLAND’S

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIES

Profit and Piety: Competing Visions for English Settlement

Breaking Away

The Chesapeake: Dreams of Wealth

Entrepreneurs in Virginia

Spinning Out of Control

“Stinking Weed”

Time of Reckoning

Corruption and Reform

Maryland: A Troubled Refuge for Catholics

Reforming England in America

“The Great Migration”

“A City on a Hill”

Limits of Religious Dissent

Mobility and Division

Diversity in the Middle Colonies

Anglo-Dutch Rivalry on the Hudson

Confusion in New Jersey

Quakers in America

Quaker Beliefs and Practice

Penn’s “Holy Experiment”

Settling Pennsylvania

Planting the Carolinas

Proprietors of the Carolinas

The Barbadian Connection

The Founding of Georgia

Conclusion: Living with Diversity

_ FEATURE ESSAY

The Children Who Refused to Come Home: Captivity and

Conversion

Chapter 3

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS: OPPORTUNITY AND

OPPRESSION IN COLONIAL SOCIETY

Families in an Atlantic Empire

Sources of Stability: New England Colonies of the

Seventeenth Century

Immigrant Families and New Social Order

Commonwealth of Families

Women’s Lives in Puritan New England

Social Hierarchy in New England

The Challenge of the Chesapeake Environment

Family Life at Risk

The Structure of Planter Society

Race and Freedom in British America

Roots of Slavery

Constructing African American Identities ILED CONTENTS

Rise of a Commercial Empire

Response to Economic Competition

Regulating Colonial Trade

Colonial Factions Spark Political Revolt, 1676—1691

Civil War in Virginia: Bacon’s Rebellion

The Glorious Revolution in the Bay Colony

Contagion of Witchcraft

The Glorious Revolution in New York and Maryland

Conclusion: Local Aspirations Within an Atlantic Empire

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Anthony Johnson: A Free Black Planter on Pungoteague

Creek

_ LAW and SOCIETY

Witches and the Law: A Problem of Evidence in 1692

Chapter 4

EXPERIENCE OF EMPIRE: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

AMERICA

Constructing an Anglo-American Identity: The Journal of

William Byrd

Growth and Diversity

Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression

Germans Search for a Better Life

Convict Settlers

Native Americans Stake Out a Middle Ground

Spanish Borderlands of the Eighteenth Century

Conquering the Northern Frontier

Peoples of the Spanish Borderlands

The Impact of European Ideas on American Culture

Provincial Cities

Ben Franklin and American Enlightenment

Economic Transformation

Birth of a Consumer Society

Religious Revivals in Provincial Societies

The Great Awakening

The Voice of Evangelical Religion

Clash of Political Cultures

The English Constitution

The Reality of British Politics

Governing the Colonies: The American Experience

Colonial Assemblies

Century of Imperial War

King William’s and Queen Anne’s Wars

King George’s War and Its Aftermath

Albany Congress and Braddock’s Defeat

Seven Years’War

Perceptions of War

Conclusion: Rule Britannia?

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Conquest by Other Means: The Pennsylvania Walking

Purchase

Chapter 5

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: FROM ELITE PROTEST

TO POPULAR REVOLT, 1763—1783

Moment of Decision: Commitment and Sacrifice

Structure of Colonial Society

Breakdown of Political Trust

No Taxation Without Representation: The American

Perspective

Ideas About Power and Virtue

Eroding the Bonds of Empire

Paying Off the National Debt

Popular Protest

Failed Attempts to Save the Empire

Fueling the Crisis

Fatal Show of Force

Last Days of Imperial Rule, 1770—1773

The Final Provocation: The Boston Tea Party

Steps Toward Independence

Shots Heard Around the World

Beginning “The World Over Again”

Fighting for Independence

Building a Professional Army

Testing the American Will

“Times That Try Men’s Souls”

Victory in a Year of Defeat

The French Alliance

The Final Campaign

The Loyalist Dilemma

Winning the Peace

Conclusion: Preserving Independence

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Popular Resistance: Religion and Rebellion

Chapter 6

THE REPUBLICAN EXPERIMENT

A New Political Morality

Defining Republican Culture

Living in the Shadow of Revolution

Social and Political Reform

African Americans in the New Republic

The Challenge of Women’s Rights

The States: Experiments in Republicanism

Blueprints for State Government

Natural Rights and the State Constitutions

Power to the People

Stumbling Toward a New National Government

Articles of Confederation

Western Land: Key to the First Constitution

Northwest Ordinance: The Confederation’s Major

Achievement

Strengthening Federal Authority

The Nationalist Critique

Diplomatic Humiliation

“Have We Fought for This?”

The Genius of James Madison

Constitutional Reform

The Philadelphia Convention

Inventing a Federal Republic

Compromise Saves the Convention

Compromising on Slavery

The Last Details

We, the People

Whose Constitution? Struggle for Ratification

Federalists and Antifederalists

Adding the Bill of Rights

Conclusion: Success Depends on the People

_ FEATURE ESSAY

The Elusive Constitution: Search for Original Intent

Chapter 7

DEMOCRACY AND DISSENT: THE VIOLENCE OF

PARTY POLITICS, 1788—1800

Force of Public Opinion

Principle and Pragmatism: Establishing a New

Government

Conflicting Visions: Jefferson and Hamilton

Hamilton’s Plan for Prosperity and Security

Funding and Assumption

Interpreting the Constitution: The Bank Controversy

Setback for Hamilton

Charges of Treason: The Battle over Foreign Affairs

The Peril of Neutrality

Jay’s Treaty Sparks Domestic Unrest

Pushing the Native Americans Aside

Popular Political Culture

Informing the Public: News and Politics

Whiskey Rebellion: Charges of Republican Conspiracy

Washington’s Farewell

The Adams Presidency

The XYZ Affair and Domestic Politics

Crushing Political Dissent

Silencing Political Opposition: The Alien and Sedition Acts

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

Adams’s Finest Hour

The Peaceful Revolution: The Election of 1800

Conclusion: Danger of Political Extremism

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Defense of Superiority: The Impact of Nationalism on

Perceptions of the Environment

Chapter 8

REPUBLICAN ASCENDANCY: THE JEFFERSONIAN

VISION

Limits of Equality

Regional Identities in a New Republic

Westward the Course of Empire

Native American Resistance

Commercial Life in the Cities

Jefferson as President

Jeffersonian Reforms

The Louisiana Purchase

The Lewis and Clark Expedition

Conflict with the Barbary States

Jefferson’s Critics

Attack on the Judges

Politics of Desperation

Murder and Conspiracy: The Curious Career of Aaron Burr

The Slave Trade

Embarrassments Overseas

Embargo Divides the Nation

A New Administration Goes to War

Fumbling Toward Conflict

The Strange War of 1812

Hartford Convention: The Demise of the Federalists

Treaty of Ghent Ends the War

Conclusion: Republican Legacy

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Barbary Pirates and American Captives: The Nation’s First

Hostage Crisis

_ LAW and SOCIETY

Aaron Burr: The Vice President Tried for Treason

Chapter 9

NATION BUILDING AND NATIONALISM

A Revolutionary War Hero Revisits America in 1824

Expansion and Migration

Extending the Boundaries

Native American Societies Under Pressure

Settlement to the Mississippi

The People and Culture of the Frontier

A Revolution in Transportation

Roads and Steamboats

The Canal Boom

Emergence of a Market Economy

The Beginning of Commercial Agriculture

Commerce and Banking

Early Industrialism

The Growth of Cities

The Politics of Nation Building After the War of 1812

The Republicans in Power

Monroe as President

The Missouri Compromise

Postwar Nationalism and the Supreme Court

Nationalism in Foreign Policy: The Monroe Doctrine

Conclusion: The End of the Era of Good Feeling

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Confronting a New Environment

Chapter 10

THE TRIUMPH OF WHITE MEN’S DEMOCRACY

Democratic Space: The New Hotels

Democracy in Theory and Practice

Democracy and Society

Democratic Culture

Democratic Political Institutions

Economic Issues

Labor Radicalism and Equal Rights

Jackson and the Politics of Democracy

The Election of 1824 and J. Q. Adams’s Administration

Jackson Comes to Power

Indian Removal

The Nullification Crisis

The Bank War and the Second Party System

Mr. Biddle’s Bank

The Bank Veto and the Election of 1832

Killing the Bank

The Emergence of the Whigs

The Rise and Fall of Van Buren

Heyday of the Second Party System

Conclusion: Tocqueville’s Wisdom

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Racial Identity in a White Man’s Democracy

Chapter 11

SLAVES AND MASTERS

Nat Turner’s Rebellion: A Turning Point in the Slave

South

The Divided Society of the Old South

The World of Southern Blacks

Slaves’ Daily Life and Labor

Slave Families, Kinship, and Community

African American Religion

Resistance and Rebellion

Free Blacks in the Old South

White Society in the Antebellum South

The Planters’ World

Planters, Racism, and Paternalism

Small Slaveholders

Yeoman Farmers

A Closed Mind and a Closed Society

Slavery and the Southern Economy

The Internal Slave Trade

The Rise of the Cotton Kingdom

Slavery and Industrialization

The “Profitability” Issue

Conclusion:Worlds in Conflict

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Harriet Jacobs and Maria Norcom: Women of Southern

Households

Chapter 12

THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION

Redeeming the Middle Class

The Rise of Evangelicalism

The Second Great Awakening: The Frontier Phase

The Second Great Awakening in the North

From Revivalism to Reform

Domesticity and Changes in the American Family

Marriage for Love

The Cult of Domesticity

The Discovery of Childhood

Institutional Reform

The Extension of Education

Discovering the Asylum

Reform Turns Radical

Divisions in the Benevolent Empire

The Abolitionist Enterprise

Black Abolitionists

From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights

Radical Ideas and Experiments

Conclusion: Counterpoint on Reform

_ FEATURE ESSAY

The War Against “Demon Drink”

_ LAW and SOCIETY

The Legal Rights of Married Women: Reforming the Law of

Coverture

Chapter 13

AN AGE OF EXPANSIONISM

The Spirit of Young America

Movement to the Far West

Borderlands of the 1830s

The Texas Revolution

The Republic of Texas

Trails of Trade and Settlement

The Mormon Trek

Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War

Tyler and Texas

The Triumph of Polk and Annexation

The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny

Polk and the Oregon Question

War with Mexico Settlement of the Mexican-American War

Internal Expansionism

The Triumph of the Railroad

The Industrial Revolution Takes Off

Mass Immigration Begins

The New Working Class

Conclusion: The Costs of Expansion

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Hispanic America After 1848: A Case Study in

Majority Rule

Chapter 14

THE SECTIONAL CRISIS

Brooks Assaults Sumner in Congress

The Compromise of 1850

The Problem of Slavery in the Mexican Cession

The Wilmot Proviso Launches the Free-Soil Movement Squatter Sovereignty and the Election of 1848

Taylor Takes Charge

Forging a Compromise

Political Upheaval, 1852—1856

The Party System in Crisis

The Kansas-Nebraska Act Raises a Storm

An Appeal to Nativism: The Know-Nothing Episode

Kansas and the Rise of the Republicans

Sectional Division in the Election of 1856

The House Divided, 1857—1860

Cultural Sectionalism

The Dred Scott Case The Lecompton Controversy

Debating the Morality of Slavery

The South’s Crisis of Fear

The Election of 1860

Conclusion: Explaining the Crisis

_ FEATURE ESSAY

The Enigma of John Brown

_ LAW and SOCIETY

The Case of Dred and Harriet Scott: Blurring the Borders of

Politics and Justice

Chapter 15

SECESSION AND THE CIVIL WAR

The Emergence of Lincoln

The Storm Gathers

The Deep South Secedes

The Failure of Compromise And the War Came

Adjusting to Total War

Prospects, Plans, and Expectations

Mobilizing the Home Fronts

Political Leadership: Northern Success and Southern Failure

Early Campaigns and Battles

The Diplomatic Struggle

Fight to the Finish

The Coming of Emancipation

African Americans and the War

The Tide Turns

Last Stages of the Conflict

Effects of the War

Conclusion: An Organizational Revolution

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Soldiering in the Civil War

Chapter 16

THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION

Robert Smalls and Black Politicians During

Reconstruction

The President vs. Congress

Wartime Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson at the Helm

Congress Takes the Initiative

Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted

The Impeachment Crisis

Reconstructing Southern Society

Reorganizing Land and Labor

Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery?

Republican Rule in the South

Claiming Public and Private Rights

Retreat from Reconstruction

Rise of the Money Question

Final Efforts of Reconstruction

A Reign of Terror Against Blacks

Spoilsmen vs. Reformers

Reunion and the New South

The Compromise of 1877

“Redeeming” a New South

The Rise of Jim Crow

Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfinished

Revolution”

_ FEATURE ESSAY

Changing Views of Reconstruction