HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES TO 1877
H2311.02
Fall, 2010
Karen McCoy, Instructor
E-mail: kkmccoy@ualr.edu
Office Hours: After class or by appointment
REQUIRED TEXTBOOK
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Paul S. Boyer et al.
(Volume 1: To 1877). Dolphin Edition. Houghton Mifflin.
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES
This course will examine the growth and development of the United States from Pre-Columbian
times through the Reconstruction era. It examines the social, economic and diplomatic aspects
that shaped the American experience. The goal of this course is to enable students to meet the
following learning objectives: 1. Students will demonstrate a knowledge of historical
information such as names, dates and chronologies, events, terms, and concepts. 2. Students will
demonstrate an understanding of the diversity and complexity of the historical context that
shapes human experience. 3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the interrelatedness of historical events as expressed in such concepts as continuity and change,
causation, interdependence of cultures, and the interaction between differing groups and
societies. 4. Students will organize and articulate their ideas through an essay that presents a
thesis relevant to the questions. 5. Students will support their ideas with historical evidence and
will reach conclusions based on that evidence.
COURSE EVALUATION: Evaluation for the course will be based on a cumulative total of
400 points.
EXAMS: There will be four examinations worth 100 points each. Each examination will cover
materials that have not been tested. The fourth (final) examination will not be comprehensive.
Each examination will consist of two sections: twenty-five multiple-choice questions worth two
points each (for a total of 50 points) and an essay question (worth 50 points).
Potential questions for the essay section of the exams will be provided ahead of time, and your
instructor will select one of these questions to appear on each exam. The multiple-choice
questions will be keyed to the Terms and Concepts (found later in this syllabus) which are
based on assigned textbook readings and lecture material. Your response on the essay question
for each exam should be at least three or four paragraphs long and must include historical
evidence to support your general ideas and to bring you to conclusions based on that evidence.
GRADES: The grading scale is as follows: 90-100=A; 80-89=B; 70-79=C; 60-69=D; 0-59=F.
To determine your grade at any point during the semester divide your accumulated points by the
number of points possible and multiply by 100. Grades will not be curved.
LATE TO CLASS ON EXAM DAY POLICY
No student will be allowed to take an examination if that student is more than ten minutes late to
class on exam day. Students who miss an examination under these circumstances may make a
request in writing or by e-mail no later than twenty-four hours after the missed exam for
permission to take a make-up examination on Consultation Day. Permission to take a make-up
exam is at the discretion of the instructor.
MAKE-UP TEST POLICY
Students are urged to take an exam at the time scheduled. If you find it impossible to take an
exam at the regularly-scheduled time (due to illness or other emergency), you should contact the
instructor in writing or by e-mail within twenty-four hours after the scheduled exam time
informing her of the reason for your absence. Make-up examinations will consist of two essay
questions (worth 50 points each). All make-up exams will be conducted on Consultation Day,
Tuesday, December 7, at 11:00 a.m. in SH111.
POLICY ON CHEATING
Students cheating on an exam or a special assignment will fail that exam or assignment and may
be reported to the administration. Plagiarism on projects, if proved, will result in a failing grade
on that project.
NO CELL PHONES OR OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES, PLEASE. (Laptops may be
used for notetaking).
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
It is the policy of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to create inclusive learning
environments. If there are aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers
to your inclusion or to accurate assessment of achievement – such as time-limited exams,
inaccessible web content, or the use of non-captioned videos – please notify your instructor as
soon as possible. Students are also welcome to contact the Disability Resource Center, telephone
501-569-3143 (vtty). For more information, visit the DRC website at http://ualr.edu/disability/.
HSITORY DEPARTMENT ASSESSMENT POLICY
The policy of the History Department is to engage students in the process of assessing courses in
the department’s curriculum. Department faculty and the UALR administration use assessment
data to monitor how well students are learning both historical context and the skills of essay
writing. At several points during the semester you may be asked to participate in this process by
writing a brief essay in class or your instructor might submit one or more of your examinations
for review by other members of the department. All assessment activities are conducted on an
anonymous basis and any evaluations will be kept in strict confidence. When you are asked to
participate in this process, please do your best. Direct any questions regarding assessment to
your instructor or to the department chairperson.
COURSE OUTLINE
(NOTE: This course is primarily a lecture course and is designed to present the historical
material topically. Your textbook is a reference book. It is written chronologically. Students
may have to refer to the Index to pursue certain topics in their continuity. Textbook readings and
lectures are designed to complement each other. The two do not always correspond. Some
material in the textbook may not be presented in the lectures. By the same token, lecture
material may not appear in the textbook. Students are responsible for material from both
sources). Lecture dates, lecture topics, assigned textbook readings, and activity dates are listed
below:
DATE
Aug 19
Aug 24
Aug 26
Aug 31
Sep 2
Sep 7
Sep 9
Sep 14
Sep 16
Sep 21
Sep 23
Sep 28
Sep 30
Oct 5
Oct 7
Oct 12
Oct 14
Oct 19
Oct 21
Oct 26
Oct 28
Nov 2
Nov 4
Nov 9
Nov 11
Nov 16
Nov 18
Nov 23
Nov 25
Nov 30
Dec 2
Dec 7
Dec 9
LECTURE TOPICS AND EXAMS
Introduction
America Before Columbus
Columbian Exchange
Settling the Chesapeake
Puritan New England
The Middle Colonies
Slavery in the Colonies
Conflict in the Colonies
EXAMINATION 1 (Lectures 1-7)
A New Economy; A New Society
The French and Indian War
The Road to Revolution
The American Revolution (Military Events)
The Confederation Government
The Constitution
The Federalists
Crises: Both Foreign and Domestic;
The Jefferson Years
EXAMINATION 2 (Lectures 8-16)
The War of 1812
The Era of Good Feelings
Jacksonian Democracy
Religion and Reform;
Economic Expansion
Manifest Destiny
The Mexican-American War
EXAMINATION 3 (Lectures 17-23)
READINGS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapters 2;3
Chapters 2;3
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Chapters 3;4
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Chapters 9;10
Chapter 10
Chapters 9-12
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
The Compromise of 1850;
Chapter 14
A Crisis of Union
Chaps. 13;14
The Civil War: Causes of the War
Chapter 14
The Civil War: Military Events
Chapter 14
THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
Reconstruction
Chapter 15
The End of Reconstruction;
Chapter 15
Conclusion
MAKE-UP EXAMINATIONS (See Make-up examinations).
FINAL EXAMINATION (Lectures 24-30)
10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(NOTE ON FINAL EXAMINATION: The dates of final examinations have been subject
to change by the Provost Office. It is the responsibility of the student to check the final
exam schedule and to know the date and time of the final exam).
CLASSROOM LECTURES (KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS)
LECTURE 1. AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS: ethnocentrism; anachronism; Beringia;
League of the Iroquois; Paleo-Indians; Archaic peoples; Adena culture; Hohokum culture;
Anasazi and Pueblo cultures; Chaco Canyon; Hopewell and Mississippian cultures; Eastern
Woodlands peoples; Cahokia; the Manitou.
LECTURE 2. COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE: Tenochtitlan; Montezuma II; Quetzolcoatl; Hernan
Cortes and Francisco Pizarro; conquistadors; Christopher Columbus; Ferdinand and Isabella;
Moors; Marco Polo; caravel; astrolabe; Crusades; Renaissance; Prince Henry the Navigator;
nation-states; early capitalism; “the Columbian Exchange.”
LECTURE 3. SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE: lost colony of Roanoke; Protestant
Reformation; Spanish Armada, 1588; Virginia Company of London; joint-stock company;
Jamestown (1607); “the Starving Time;” Captain John Smith, John Rolfe and Pocahontas;
House of Burgesses; tobacco; headrights; indentured servants.
LECTURE 4. PURITAN NEW ENGLAND: Separatists, Pilgrims, and Plymouth; Mayflower
Compact; John Winthrop, Puritans, Anglicans, and the “errand into the wilderness,” “city upon a
hill;” Massachusetts General Court; New England town meeting; Anne Hutchinson and the
Antinomians; Roger Williams; Salem witchcraft.
LECTURE 5. THE MIDDLE COLONIES: corporate colonies, royal colonies, and proprietary
colonies; Society of Friends (Quakers); William Penn, Pennsylvania, and the “holy experiment.”
LECTURE 6. SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES: chattel slavery; Gold Coast; Triangular Trade;
Middle Passage; tight and loose packers; Black Codes.
LECTURE 7. CONFLICT IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES: King Philip’s War (Wampanoags);
Bacon’s Rebellion (Susquehannocks); Glorious Revolution (1688); Dominion of New England;
Sir Edmond Andros; Leisler’s Rebellion.
LECTURE 8. A NEW ECONOMY; A NEW SOCIETY: chronometer; mercantilism;
Navigation Acts; salutary neglect; American Enlightenment; Benjamin Franklin; American
Philosophical Society; Deists; Junto; Poor Richard’s Almanac; the Great Awakening; Jonathan
Edwards; George Whitefield; New Lights versus Old Lights.
LECTURE 9. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR: Seven Year’s War; Fort Duquesne; George
Washington; Fort Niagara; Treaty of Paris (1763).
LECTURE 10. THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION: King George III; writs of assistance and
James Otis: Sugar Act and vice-admiralty courts; Stamp Act and Stamp Act Congress; virtual
representation versus actual representation; Sons of Liberty; Townshend Duties; the Boston
Massacre; committees of correspondence; Tea Act and Boston Tea Party; Coercive or Intolerable
Acts; minutemen; Paul Revere and Lexington and Concord; Olive Branch Petition; Thomas
Paine and Common Sense; Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence.
LECTURE 11. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Henry Knox; loyalists (Tories) versus
patriots (Whigs); Hessians; Marquis de Lafayette; Continental Army; Trenton and Princeton;
General Burgoyne, General Horatio Gates and Saratoga; Valley Forge and Frederick von
Steuban; Yorktown; John Adams, John Jay and the Treaty of Paris.
LECTURE 12. THE CONFEDERATION GOVERNMENT: the Articles of Confederation;
Ordinance of 1785 and Northwest Ordinance of 1787; Shays’s Rebellion.
LECTURE 13. THE CONSTITUTION: the Virginia Plan; the New Jersey Plan and the
Connecticut (or Great) Compromise; Three-fifths Compromise; slave trade; tariffs; checks and
balances; fundamental balance of powers and federation; Federalists versus Antifederalists; John
Jay; Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and The Federalist Papers.
LECTURE 14. THE FEDERALISTS: Judiciary Act of 1789; Bill of Rights; Alexander
Hamilton’s Financial Plan; strict versus loose interpretation and the “necessary and proper”
clause of the Constitution; Whiskey Rebellion; Federalists versus Republicans.
LECTURE 15. CRISES: BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC: Napoleonic Wars, citizen
Edmond Genet; Jay’s treaty; Washington’s farewell address and the policy of isolation; XYZ
Affair and the Quasi-War with France; Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; Kentucky and Virginia
Resolutions of 1789; nullification; election of 1800 and the Jefferson-Burr tie.
LECTURE 16. THE JEFFERSON YEARS: Judiciary Act of 1801 and Marbury v. Madison;
Louisiana Purchase of 1803; Lewis and Clark’s Expedition; British Orders in Council and
Napoleon’s Continental System; impressments; Chesapeake-Leopard affair; Embargo Act.
LECTURE 17. THE WAR OF 1812: maritime grievances and territorial ambitions; war hawks;
John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay; Tecumseh and the Prophet; William Henry Harrison and the
Battle of Tippecanoe; Oliver Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie; Fort McHenry; Treaty of Ghent
and the status quo antebellum; the Hartford Convention; Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New
Orleans; “second war of independence.”
LECTURE 18. THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS: Missouri Compromise; Adams-Onis or
Transcontinental Treaty; Monroe Doctrine; Protective Tariff; Second Bank of the United States
(BUS); Panic of 1819.
LECTURE 19. JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY: Election of 1828; second party system;
National-Republicans (Whigs) v. Democrats; “Old Hickory;” “Age of the Common Man;” Tariff
of Abominations; John C. Calhoun and South Carolina Exposition and Protest; Nicholas Biddle
and the Bank of the United States; “pet banks;” Specie Circular; Trail of Tears; Log Cabin
campaign, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” and the election of 1840.
LECTURE 20. ECONOMIC EXPANSION: Eli Whitney, the cotton gin, and interchangeable
parts; Lowell Mills; market economy; John Deere and Cyrus McCormick.
LECTURE 21. RELIGIOUS AND REFORM IMPULSES: Second Great Awakening; Social
Gospel; Utopian societies; Temperance Movement; Horace Mann; Dorothea Dix; the Women’s
Rights Movement; Declaration of Sentiments; Seneca Falls, New York; Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony; Sojourner Truth; William Lloyd Garrison and the
American Anti-Slavery Society; The Liberator; Frederick Douglass; Harriet Tubman.
LECTURE 22. MANIFEST DESTINY: Brigham Young and the Mormons; John L O’Sullivan
and manifest destiny; Texas; empressario system; Stephen F. Austin; Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna; the Alamo; Sam Houston; San Jacinto and the Lone Star Republic; election of 1844;
Henry Clay v. James K. Polk; Oregon territory; “Fifty-four forty or fight!”
LECTURE 23. THE MEXICAN WAR: John Slidell; Nueces River; Rio Grande; Vera Cruz;
Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott; Stephen Kearny, John C. Fremont and the Bear Flag Republic;
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; Mexican Cession; Gadsden Purchase.
LECTURE 24. COMPROMISE OF 1850: California; election of 1848; Zachary Taylor; Free
Soil Party; Wilmot Proviso; squatter or popular sovereignty; Henry Clay’s omnibus bill and the
Compromise of 1850.
LECTURE 25. THE CRISIS OF UNION: Stephen Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act;
“Bleeding Kansas;” Lecompton v. Topeka legislatures and the Lecompton Constitution; John
Brown, the sack of Lawrence, and the Pottawatomie massacre; the Sumner-Brooks affair; Harriet
Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Republican Party; American (or Know-Nothing) Party;
Roger Taney and Dred Scott v. Sanford; Lincoln-Douglas debates and Douglas’s Freeport
Doctrine; John Brown and Harper’s Ferry, Va.; election of 1860 and Abraham Lincoln;
Secession and the Confederate States of America (CSA); Jefferson Davis and Alexander
Stephens; Fort Sumter, South Carolina (1861).
LECTURE 26. CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR
LECTURE 27: THE CIVIL WAR: WAR IN THE EAST: Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens
and the Radical Republicans; Winfield Scott and the Anaconda Plan; first battle of Bull Run
(First Manassas); Robert E. Lee; Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson; Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg),
Md.; Emancipation Proclamation; Gettysburg, Pa; ironclads and battles of the Merrimac and the
Monitor.
LECTURE 28. THE CIVIL WAR: WAR IN THE WEST: Ulysses S. Grant; Vicksburg; Port
Hudson; Sherman’s March; surrender at Appomatox Courthouse, Va.
LECTURE 29. RECONSTRUCTION (PRESIDENTIAL AND MILITARY): Lincoln’s Ten
Percent Plan; Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan; Thirteenth Amendment; Congressional
Reconstruction: Civil Rights Act of 1866; Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866; Fourteenth
Amendment; First Reconstruction Act of 1867; impeachment of Andrew Johnson; Tenure of
Office Act; Ulysses S. Grant; Radical Republicans and Military Reconstruction.
LECTURE 30. THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION (1877): Carpetbaggers; scalawags;
Freedmen; Ku Klux Klan; Fifteenth Amendment; election of 1876; Samuel Tilden v. Rutherford
B. Hayes; poll tax, literary clause, and grandfather clause; Jim Crow Laws; Plessy v. Ferguson
and the “separate but equal” doctrine; sharecropping and tenant farming; debt peonage.