Term Paper: Each student will write a paper of ten to twelve pages, comparing two
works of history dealing with the same general subject. The paper should analyze and
compare the approach, use of evidence, and overall interpretation and conclusions of the
two three works (rather than simply summarizing their arguments.) It should judge how
well each author succeeds in what he or she sets out to do, and indicate which of the
works you find most persuasive, and why. The paper is due at the ta sections during the
week of April 28. Below is a list of significant works from which to choose, organized
by subject. Those who wish to write on other topics or books should speak to me, or to
your discussion section leader, as should those seeking guidance on choosing topics and
books. I have not included studies of specific individuals, but it is perfectly acceptable to
compare, for example, two biographies of Andrew Jackson or Frederick Douglass.
Jacksonian Society:
Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War
Douglas Miller, Jacksonian Aristocracy
Carl Fish, The Age of the Common Man
Richard Brown, Modernization
Peter Knights, Plain People of Boston
Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants
Raymond Mohl, Poverty in New York
John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth
Randolph Roth, The Democratic Dilemma
John M. Faragher, Sugar Creek
Paul Bourke, Washington County
Gregory Nobles, American Frontiers
Jacksonian Politics:
Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy
John W. Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age
Robert Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party
Robert Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson
Richard McCormick, The Second American Party System
James Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication
Daniel Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs
Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom
James Young, The Washington Community
Arthur Cole, The Whig Party in the South
Dixon R. Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in New York State
Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion
Harry Watson, Jacksonian Democracy and Community Conflict
Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics
Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic
John Ashworth, Agrarians and Aristocrats
Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
The Bank War:
Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War
Roger Sharp, The Jacksonians Versus the Banks
William Shade, Banks or No Banks
Willard Smith, Economic Aspects of the Second Bank of the United States
Jean Wilburn, Biddle's Bank
James McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance
Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America
Indian Policy:
Anthony Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians
Michael Rogin, Fathers and Children
Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages
Ronald Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era
Grant Foreman, Indian Removal
Frederick Hoxie, Parading Through History
The Economic Revolution:
George R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution
Thomas Cochran, Frontiers of Change
Douglas North, The Economic Growth of the United States
Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy
Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of Canals and Railroads
Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law
Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought
Robert Albion, The Rise of New York Port
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
Carl Siracusa, A Mechanical People
Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution
Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent
Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, To Their Own Soil
Labor:
Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class
Alan Dawley, Class and Community
Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians
Bernard Mandel, Labor: Free and Slave
Bruce Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia
Anthony Wallace, Rockdale
Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor
Robert Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor
Peter Way, Common Labour
Christopher Tomlins, Labor, Law, and Ideology in the Early Republic
David Zonderman, Aspirations and Anxieties
Teresa Murphy, Ten Hours Labor
Jama Lazerow, Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America
Women:
Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress
Catherine Clinton, The Other Civil War
Thomas Dublin, Women at Work
Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate
Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class
Julie Jeffries, Frontier Women
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood
Hannah Josephson, The Golden Threads
Keith Melder, Beginnings of Sisterhood
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household
Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work
Christine Stansell, City of Women
Nancy Osterud, Bonds of Community
Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law
Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America
Julie Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism
Reform:
Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias
John Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World
Whitney Cross, The Burned Over District
Clyde Griffen, Their Brothers' Keepers
Ian Tyrell, Sobering Up
William Rorabough, The Alcoholic Republic
Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought
Michael Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform
Carl Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban School System
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
Stanley Schultz, The Culture Factory
Yehoshua Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology
Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias
Paul Johnson, A Shopkeepers Millennium
Abolitionism:
Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slvaery
Aileen Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism
Leonard Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing
Gerald Sorin, New York Abolitionists
Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists
Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism
Gilbert Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse
Lawrence Freidman, Gregarious Saints
Dwight Dumond, Antislavery
Russel Nye, Fettered Freedom
John and Jane Pease, They Who Would be Free
Ronald Walters, The Antislavery Appeal
Daniel McInerney, The Fortunate Heirs of Freedom
Slavery: General Works
Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery
Richard Wade, Slavery in the Cities
Nathan Huggins, Black Odyssey
William Scarborough, The Overseer
William Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee
William Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South
Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside
Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor
Eugene D. Genovese, The Slaveholders' Dilemma
Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America
James and Lois Horton, In Hope of Liberty
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small World
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
Slavery: Origins and Era of the American Revolution
Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black
Edward Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color
Peter Wood, Black Majority
Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia
Lorenzo Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England
Duncan McLeod, Slavery, Race, and the American Revolution
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
Robert McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonain Virginia
John Miller, The Wolf by the Ears
Slavery: Resistance:
Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts
Eugene D. Genovese, From Resistance to Revolution
Stephen Oates, The Fires of Jubilee
Slavery: Comparative
Carl Degler, Neither Black Nor White
Herbert Klein, Slavery in the Americas
George Fredrickson, White Supremacy
Frank Tannebaum, Slave and Citizen
Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death
Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made
Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor
Slavery: Culture
John Blassingame, The Slave Community
George Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup
Leslie Owens, This Species of Property
Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Consciousness
Arthur Robateau, Slave Religion
Thomas Webber, Deep Like the Rivers
Deborah White, Ain't I a Woman?
Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture
Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom
Slavery: Economics:
Robert Starobin, Industrial Slaverty in the Old South
Harold Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers
Frank Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old Sourth
Ronald Lewis, Coal, Iron, and Slaves
Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South
Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, A Deplorable Scarcity
Luther Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia
Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South
Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross
Robert Fogel, Without Consent or Coercion
Frederick Siegel, The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness
Slavery and Politics:
Donald Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
Charles Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism
John McCardle, The Idea of a Southern Nation
J. Mills Thornton, Politics and Power in a Slave Society
William Cooper, The South and the Politics of Slavery
Ralph Wooster, Politicians, Planters, and Plain Folk
William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War
William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol I.
Lacy Ford, The Origins of Southern Radicalism
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness
Alexander Saxton, The White Republic
Expansion and Politics in the l840s:
Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission
Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific
Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence
Ernest Lander, The Reluctant Imperialists
Joseph Rayback, Free Soil
Frederick Blue, The Free Soilers
Chaplain Morrison, Democratic Politics and Sectional Controversy
Kinley Brauer, Cotton Versus Conscience
Frederick Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas
Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict
Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny