U.S. HISTORY 2013-2014 CALENDAR
Weeks of
Instruction
Week 1
Sept. 2-6
Week 2
Sept. 9-13
Week 3
Sept. 16-20
Week 4
Sept. 23-27
Week 5
Sept. 30-4
Week 6
Oct. 7-11
BREAK
Oct. 14-15
Week 7
Oct. 16-18
Topics/Assignments
UNIT 1: AMERICAN COLONIES TO 1763
American Beginnings, 1607-1650
Foner, Chapter 2
Main Topics: Seventeenth century immigration, the waning of indentured servitude
and the growth of slavery.
Primary Documents: John Winthrop, “Speech to the Massachusetts General Court”
(1645), The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637)
North American Colonies, 1650-1750
Foner, Chapter 3
Main Topics: the Puritans’ definition of freedom, Quakers, religious freedom, King
Philip’s War, Bacon’s Rebellion, Salem witch trials.
Primary Documents: William Penn on Religious Liberty, England’s Present Interest
Discovered (1675), Nathanial Bacon on Bacon’s Rebellion (1676).
Slavery, Freedom, and the Struggle for Empire
Foner, Chapter 4
Main Topics: Slavery, British identity, the growing public sphere, Great Awakening,
The Seven Years’ War, Pontiac’s Rebellion, colonial identity.
Primary Documents: Pontiac, Two Speeches (1762-1763), Virginia Resolutions on
the Stamp Act (1765)
UNIT 2: A NEW NATION, 1763-1840
The American Revolution, 1763-1783
Foner, Chapter 5
Main Topics: The Stamp Act, Road to Revolution, Common Sense, Declaration of
Independence, Revolutionary War.
Primary Documents: Virginia Resolutions on the Stamp Act (1765), Thomas Paine,
Common Sense, (1776).
The Revolution Within
Foner, Chapter 6
Main Topics: Separation of church and state, religious freedom, the impact of
revolution on Indians, blacks, and women.
Primary Documents: Abigail and John Adams on Women and the American
Revolution (1776), Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom
(1785).
Founding a Nation, 1783-1789
Foner, Chapter 7
Main Topics: Articles of Confederation, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, debates
that shaped the Constitution, Bill of Rights.
Primary Documents: James Madison, The Federalists No. 51 (1787), James Winthrop
on the Anti-Federalists Argument (1787).
Securing the Republic, 1790-1815
Foner, Chapter 8
Main topics: Comparing Hamilton and Jefferson’s views of national government,
Federalists vs. Republicans, War of 1812
Primary Documents: Address of the Democratic-Republican Society of
Pennsylvania (1794), Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790),
Week 8
Oct. 21-25
Week 9
Oct. 28-1
Week 10
Nov. 4-8
Week 11
Nov. 11-15
George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)
The Market Revolution
Foner, Chapter 9
Main topics: The main features of the new economy, impact of the market
revolution on women and African-Americans, Transcendentalism
Primary Documents: Josephine L. Baker, “A Second Peep at Factory Life” (1840),
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837), Henry David Thoreau,
Walden (1854)
Democracy in America
Foner, Chapter 10
Main topics: Main characteristics of “The American System,” Andrew Jackson and
democratic nationalism, Indian removal
Primary Documents: “The Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the City of
Richmond” (1829), “John Quincy Adams on the Role of the National Government”
(1825)
UNIT 3: SLAVERY, FREEDOM, & CRISIS OF THE UNION, 1840-1877
The Peculiar Institution
Foner, Chapter 11
Main topics: How slavery shaped social and economic conditions in the South, slave
culture, and forms of resistance, Amistad
Primary Documents: John C. Calhoun, Speeches in Congress (1837-1838), The
Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)
An Age of Reform, 1820-1840
Foner, Chapter 12
Main topics: Antebellum reform, abolitionism, women’s rights movement
Primary Documents: Opening Editorial of The Liberator (1831), Angelina Grimke´
on Women’s Rights from The Liberator (1852), Declaration of Sentiments of the
Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
BREAK
Nov. 23-2
Week 12
Dec. 3-6
Week 13
Dec. 9-13
A House Divided, 1840-1861
Foner, Chapter 13
Main topics: Territorial expansion, “manifest destiny” and ideas of racial superiority,
the rise of the Republican Party, the emergence of Lincoln, the secession movement
Primary Documents: Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”
(1849), William Henry Seaward, “The Irrepressible Conflict” (1858)
The Civil War (1861-1865)
Foner, Chapter 14
Main topics: Slavery and the War, impact of the War on society & economy of
Confederacy, political turning points of the War
Primary Documents: Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (1863), Frederick
Douglass on Black Soldiers (1863), Mary Livermore on Women and the War (1883)
BREAK
Dec. 17-Jan. 6
Week 14
Jan. 7-10
Week 15
Reconstruction (1865-1877)
Foner, Chapter 15
Main topics: slaves and slaveholders in the postwar South, social and political
impact of radical Reconstruction in the South, split of the women’s movement
during Reconstruction, main reasons for defeat of Reconstruction in the South
Primary Documents: Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew
Johnson (1865), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Home Life” (1875)
America’s Gilded Age
Jan. 13-17
Week 16
Jan 20-24
Week 17
Jan. 27-31
Week 19
Feb. 10-14
Foner, Chapter 16
Main topics: economic and social transformation after the Civil War, political
system of the Gilded Age, defining freedom in a rapidly industrialized society,
Indian relations
Primary Documents: Chief Joseph, “An Indians View of Indian Affairs” (1879),
George E. McNeill on the Labor Movement in the Gilded Age (1887), Henry
George, Progress and Poverty (1879)
UNIT 4: TOWARD A GLOBAL PRESENCE, 1870-1920
Freedom’s Boundaries at Home and Abroad: 1890-1900
Foner, Chapter 17
Main topics: The rise and fall of the Populist Party, the gains of Reconstruction
reversed, immigration and nativism, response by blacks, women, and labor to
limitations of Gilded Age, Spanish-American War and American expansion overseas
Primary Documents: The Populist Platform (1892), Saum Sung Bo, ChineseAmerican Protest, from American Missionary (1885)
The Progressive Era, 1900-1916
Foner, Chapter 18
Main topics: The role of the city in Progressive America, Progressive politics, the
role of labor and women’s movements in redefining freedom in America.
Primary Documents: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (1898),
The Industrial Workers of the World and the Free Speech Fights (1909), Margaret
Sanger on “Free Motherhood,” from Women and the New Race (1920)
From Business Culture to Great Depression: The Twenties, 1920-1932
Foner, Chapter 20
Main topics: pro-business government policies of the twenties; protection of civil
liberties, retreat from Progressivism, fundamentalism and pluralism, the Harlem
Renaissance and the “New Negro,” and the Great Depression
Primary Documents: Andre Siegfried on the “New Society” from the Atlantic
Monthly (1928), The Fight for Civil Liberties (1921), Alain Locke, The New Negro
(1925)
BREAK
Feb.15-24
Week 20
Feb. 25-28
Week 21
Mar. 3-7
Week 22
Mar. 10-14
UNIT 5: DEPRESSION AND WARS, 1920-1953
The New Deal, 1932-1940
Foner, Chapter 21
Main topics: Major policy initiatives of the New Deal (successes and failures), New
Deal and the meaning of freedom, impact of the New Deal on women and AfricanAmericans, Popular Front culture
Primary Documents: John L. Lewis on Labor’s Great Upheaval (1936), Franklin D.
Roosevelt on Economic Freedom (1936), W.E.B. DuBois, “A Negro Nation within
a Nation” (1935)
Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II, 1941-1945
Foner, Chapter 22
Main topics: American intervention in World War II, the Four Freedoms,
experience of African-Americans and other minorities at home and abroad, women
at war, defining freedom in the postwar world.
Primary Documents: Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Four Freedoms (1941), Justice
Robert A. Jackson, Dissent in Korematsu v. United States (1944)
The United States and the Cold War, 1945-1953
Foner, Chapter 23
Main topics: Emergence of the Cold War in the postwar period, reshaping ideas of
American freedom, emerging concept of human rights, major initiatives of
Week 23
Mar. 17-21
Week 24
March 24-28
Week 25
Mar 31-4
Truman’s Fair Deal, impact of anti-communism of Cold War on American politics
and culture
Primary Documents: The Truman Doctrine (1947), Walter Lippman, A Critique of
Containment (1947), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Henry
Steele Commager, “Who is Loyal to America?” (1947)
An Affluent Society, 1953-1960
Foner, Chapter 24
Main topics: 1950s culture: main characteristics of the affluent society,
suburbanization and the hardening of racial divisions, Modern Republicanism, roots
of the civil rights movement.
Primary Documents: C. Wright Mils on “Cheerful Robots” (1959), Allen Ginsberg,
Howl (1956), Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
UNIT 6: WHAT KIND OF NATION? 1953-2004
The Sixties, 1960-1968
Foner, Chapter 25; Iserman and Kazin, America Divided
Main topics: the Kennedy years, the civil rights movement of the early 1960s,
Johnson’s Great Society programs, the changing black freedom struggle, impact of
the Vietnam War on American culture and politics, sources and significance of the
rights revolution of the late 1960s, significance of 1968.
Primary Documents: James Baldwin on Student Radicals (1960), The Port Huron
Statement (1962), Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
The Triumph of Conservatism, 1969-1988
Foner, Chapter 26
Main topics: Nixon administration’s major social and economic policies, Watergate,
rising conservatism of the 1970s, the Reagan Revolution, and a shift in the meaning
of freedom.
Primary Documents: Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), The Sharon
Statement (1960), Jimmy Carter on Human Rights (1977), Ronald Reagan, Inaugural
Address (1981)
BREAK
April 5-14
Week 26
April 15-18
FINAL PROJECT/RESEARCH
Week 27
April 21-25
FINAL PROJECT/RESEARCH
Week 28
April 28-2
Week 29
May 5-9
Week 31
May 19-23
Week 32
May 26-30
PRESENTATIONS
REVIEW
REVIEW
FINAL EXAMS