History 362
REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA
Reed College
Spring 2009
MW 3:10-4:30
Vollum 110
Margot Minardi
minardi@reed.edu, 503-517-7477
Office hours: T 9-11, Th 1-2
and by appointment, Vollum 124
In the late eighteenth century, thirteen North American colonies severed their colonial
ties to Britain and constituted a new nation. This course will assess the causes of these
changes, as well as the extent to which they altered the political, diplomatic, social, and
cultural landscape of North America. We will address major conflicts of the period from
1763 to 1815, including the tensions between libertarian ideology and institutionalized
slavery, household dependence and national independence, centralized authority and
local control, enlightenment rationalism and evangelical religion, private property and
communal interests, and Indian sovereignty and American expansionism.
Within this broad framework, this course emphasizes two aspects of the recent
historiography of the American Revolution. First, we will consider how people on the
margins of British colonial society (including slaves, Indians, workers, and women)
shaped and were shaped by the transformations of the late eighteenth century. Second,
we will study recent texts that situate the Revolutionary years in continental, Atlantic,
international, or imperial contexts, thereby countering “exceptionalist” narratives that
have long held sway in this field. In addition to reading secondary works in these two
strands of Revolutionary historiography, we will read numerous primary sources
produced by eighteenth-century Americans, including political tracts, autobiographies,
newspaper advertisements, and a novel. We will consider how the images of the late
eighteenth century that these sources create compare to the mythic narratives of the
founding era perpetuated after the Revolution.
By the end of the semester, you should be able to:
o identify major events, figures, and ideas in American history in the period 1763-1815;
o describe and analyze scholarly debates concerning Revolutionary America, especially
relating to social history and to the global turn in recent historiography;
o interpret primary documents from Revolutionary America with reference to their
social, cultural, and political context.
Expectations and assignments
Honor principle
Reed’s honor principle governs our conduct in this course in two ways:
o Respect for others. If you don’t agree with what someone else has to say, you are
welcome (and encouraged) to express your point of view, but you must do so
respectfully, and you must support your claims with textual evidence.
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o Intellectual honesty. If you have questions about what constitutes plagiarism and
how to avoid it, don’t hesitate to ask. In your written work, please follow the
Chicago Manual of Style for footnotes, not in-text citations. There is an abbreviated
guide to Chicago style here:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Conference attendance and participation
You are expected to come to conference on time and prepared to participate in discussion
of the assigned readings. Participation includes both expressing your own ideas and
questions and listening carefully to those of others. Please bring copies of each day’s
reading to conference with you. Missing more than three conferences will put you at risk
of failing the course.
Written assignments
You will receive detailed descriptions of all written assignments ahead of their due dates.
Late work will be penalized and will receive minimal comments. Failure to complete all
written assignments will put you at risk of failing the course.
o Reading responses. Beginning in the second week, you will be assigned on a biweekly basis to post to the course email list a brief response (no more than 200
words) to the readings. These responses are due by 10 a.m. the day of the conference
at which the readings will be discussed. On days when you are not assigned to
comment on readings, you should be sure to review your classmates’ comments in
preparation for conference. All students are expected to complete four responses by
the end of the semester.
o Two short papers. 1500 words each; due at my office by 5 p.m. on Friday, February
20 and Friday, March 13.
o Preparatory assignments for final paper. You should email me a brief proposal for
your final paper by 8 p.m. on Friday, April 3. In addition, a report of 1000-1500
words on the primary source you will use for your final paper is due by 5 p.m. on
Saturday, April 18 (submit electronically).
o Final paper. The paper will require you to make a historical argument about a
primary source (or set of primary sources) of your own choosing. 4000-4500 words;
due by 5 p.m. on Friday, May 8.
Reading
The required books are on order at the bookstore and on reserve at the library:
a) Gunter Barth, ed., The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals
Arranged by Topic (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998). [$14.38, 0312111185]
b) Colin Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). [$15.95, 0195331273]
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c) Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (New
York: Hill and Wang, 2002). [$16.00, 080907821X]
d) Hannah W. Foster, The Coquette, ed. Cathy N. Davidson (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987). [$12.95, 0195042395]
e) Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Kenneth Silverman
(New York: Penguin, 1986). [$8.00, 0142437603]
f) David Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding
(Lawerence: University Press of Kansas, 2006). [$19.95, 0700614931]
g) Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
(New York: Vintage, 1998). [$14.95, 0679779086]
h) Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American
Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
[$16.00, 0807055158]
i) Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American
Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). [$18.00, 0807054054]
Most of the additional readings are available electronically, either through online
journals, public websites, or the course e-reserves; the appropriate site or link is marked
below. I strongly advise making photocopies or printouts of reserve and online readings
so that you can bring hard copies of the readings to conference. A digital version of the
syllabus, with links to the online readings, is available via Moodle (log on to
moodle.reed.edu and go to History 362). The Moodle site also provides access to
additional information about the course and the topics covered.
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Week 1: Introduction
M 1/26 American scripture
a) Barack Obama, remarks for inaugural whistle stop tour, Philadelphia, January 17,
2009: http://www.pic2009.org/pressroom/entry/remarks_of_presidentelect_barack_obama_-_philadelphia_pennsylvania/
b) Barack Obama, inaugural address, January 20, 2009:
http://www.pic2009.org/pressroom/entry/president_obamas_inaugural_address/
c) Linda Hirshman, “Citizens, Not Americans,” posting to The New Republic
online, January 20, 2009:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/citizens-notamericans-the-metaphysics-of-barack-obama-s-inaugural-address.aspx
d) Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. 1, December 23, 1776:
http://www.thomaspaine.org/Archives/Crisis-1.html
e) John Adams, letter to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818:
http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=599
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W 1/28 Setting the scene
a) Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising,”
William and Mary Quarterly 14.1 (1957): 3-15.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1917368
b) T. H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution:
Revisions Once More in Need of Revising,” Journal of American History 84.1
(1997): 13-39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2952733
c) Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 3-46.
Week 2: The Revolutionary man (and woman)
M 2/2 Virtue and freedom
a) Franklin, Autobiography, 3-93.
b) Elopement advertisements and other newspaper items. [on Moodle]
RESPONSE: Group A.
W 2/4 Ben Franklin: representations and representativeness
a) Franklin, Autobiography, 93-171.
RESPONSE: Group B.
Week 3: The transformation of empire
M 2/9 Mapping a new world order
a) Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen, 47-171.
RESPONSE: Group C.
W 2/11 The stuff of revolution
a) T. H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of
the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (1988): 73-104.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/651021
b) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Willie-Nillie, Niddy-Noddy,” in The Age of Homespun:
Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Knopf,
2001), 175-207. [e-reserves]
c) Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress (1765):
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1068&I
temid=264
d) Soame Jenyns, “The Objections to the Taxation of our American
Colonies…Briefly Consider’d” (1765):
http://homepages.udayton.edu/~alexanrs/SOAME.html
RESPONSE: Group D.
Week 4: Breaking away
M 2/16 Cities in revolt
a) Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, vii-xvii, 3-57.
b) Maier, American Scripture, xvi-xxi, 3-46.
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RESPONSE: Group A.
W 2/18 What did the declaration declare?
a) Maier, American Scripture, 47-170, 225-241.
RESPONSE: Group B.
F 2/20 FIRST SHORT PAPER DUE by 5 p.m. to Vollum 124.
Week 5: Taking sides
M 2/23 Opting for freedom
a) Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, ix-xxii, 3-72.
b) Felix’s petition (1773): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h22t.html
c) Petition of January 1777: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h32t.html
d) Explore the following websites, and bring to class a page of notes recounting your
discoveries (further instructions in class):
http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html and
http://www.blackloyalist.com/canadiandigitalcollection/documents/official/book_
of_negroes.htm
RESPONSE: Group C.
W 2/25 Strange alliances and intimate enemies
a) Jim Piecuch, “Incompatible Allies: Loyalists, Slaves, and Indians in
Revolutionary South Carolina,” in War and Society in the American Revolution:
Mobilization and Home Fronts, ed. John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 191-214. [e-reserves]
b) Karim M. Tiro, “A ‘Civil’ War? Rethinking Iroquois Participation in the
American Revolution,” Explorations in Early American Culture 4 (2000): 148165. [e-reserves]
c) Documents from Nicholas Hawwawas pension file. [on Moodle]
RESPONSE: Group D.
Week 6: War
M 3/2 Honor and violence
a) Excerpts from Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental
Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1979), 3-23, 58-80, 96-120, 190-197, 213-238. [library reserve]
b) Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, 58-84.
RESPONSE: Group A.
W 3/4 War at home
a) Letters of Joseph and Sarah Hodgkins, in This Glorious Cause...: The Adventures
of Two Company Officers in Washington’s Army, ed. Herbert T. Wade and Robert
A. Lively (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 200-245. [e-reserves]
b) Letters of John and Abigail Adams. [handout]
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c) Holly A. Mayer, “Wives, Concubines, and Community: Following the Army,” in
War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts, ed.
John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press,
2007), 235-262. [e-reserves]
RESPONSE: Group B.
Week 7: Another look at the war years
M 3/9 The invisible enemy
a) Fenn, Pox Americana, 3-134.
RESPONSE: Group C.
W 3/11 Continental perspectives
a) Fenn, Pox Americana, 135-277.
RESPONSE: Group D.
F 3/13 SECOND SHORT PAPER DUE by 5 p.m. to Vollum 124
M 3/16-F 3/20 SPRING BREAK
Week 8: Making states
M 3/23 The politics of “the people”
a) John Adams, “Thoughts on Government” (1776):
http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=37
b) [For reference] Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1780):
http://www.mass.gov/legis/const.htm
c) [For reference] “John Adams and the Massachusetts Constitution”:
http://www.mass.gov/courts/sjc/adams-and-constitution.html
d) Excerpts from The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the
Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, ed. Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 422-427, 485-489, 659-662,
681-684, 765-769, 820-824. [e-reserves]
e) “To the Publick,” Massachusetts Gazette (January 1788):
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6213
RESPONSE: Group B.
W 3/25 State of states, nation among nations
a) Hendrickson, Peace Pact, ix-xiv, 3-64, 115-260.
b) Constitution of the United States of America and Bill of Rights:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
RESPONSE: Group A.
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Week 9: Party politics
M 3/30 The transformation of political culture
a) James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787):
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm
b) “The Rise of the Party Press, 1797-1800” and “The Election of 1800, February
1800-March 1801,” in The Revolutionary Era: Primary Documents on Events
from 1776 to 1800, ed. Carol Sue Humphrey (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
2003), 253-261, 337-347. [e-reserves]
c) Alan Taylor, “From Fathers to Friends of the People: Political Personas in the
Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 11.4 (1991): 465-491.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3123352
d) Jeffrey L. Pasley, “1800 as a Revolution in Political Culture: Newspapers,
Celebrations, Voting, and Democratization in the Early Republic,” in The
Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, ed. James Horn,
Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
2002), 121-152. [e-reserves]
RESPONSE: Group D.
W 4/1 Dueling and dining
a) Catherine Allgor, introduction and “President Thomas Jefferson in Washington
City,” in Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City
and a Government (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 1-47. [ereserves]
b) Joanne Freeman, “Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr-Hamilton Duel,”
William and Mary Quarterly 53.2 (1996): 289-318.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2947402
c) Use America’s Historical Newspapers to identify newspaper coverage of the
Burr-Hamilton duel. Bring notes to class.
RESPONSE: Group C.
F 4/3 FINAL PAPER PROPOSAL due by 8 p.m. via email
Week 10: Ironies of freedom I
M 4/6 Dangerous liberty
a) Foster, The Coquette.
RESPONSE: Group B.
W 4/8 Killing slavery and conceiving race
a) Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of
Africa (New London, 1798): http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/venture/venture.html
b) Petition of Primus Grant and others (1798). [on Moodle]
c) John Wood Sweet, “Conceiving Race,” in Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the
American North, 1730-1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003),
271-311. [e-reserves]
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RESPONSE: Group A.
Week 11: Ironies of freedom II
M 4/13 Enlightenment and empire
a) The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1-6, 14-32, 45-51, 65-72, 101-115, 127-190,
199-207, 216-221.
RESPONSE: Group D.
W 4/15 Searching the globe for freedom
a) Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 75-205.
RESPONSE: Group C.
S 4/18 PRIMARY SOURCE REPORT due by 5 p.m. via email
Week 12: New horizons
M 4/20 Writing workshop
W 4/22 The wars of 1811
a) François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in
Atlantic History,” American Historical Review 113.3 (2008): 647-677.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/ahr.113.3.647
b) Adam Rothman, “Commerce and Slavery in Lower Louisiana” and “The Wartime
Challenge,” in Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep
South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 73-164. [e-reserves]
c) Message of Tenskwatawa (1804), in A Documentary History of Religion in
America to 1877, 3rd ed., ed. Edwin S. Gaustad and Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 469-470. [e-reserves]
d) Tecumseh, “Address to the Osages” (1811):
http://www.historytools.org/sources/tecumseh.pdf
RESPONSE: Optional/make-up.
Week 13: Legacies
M 4/27 Remembering the Revolution
a) Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, 87-207.
RESPONSE: Optional/make-up.
W 4/29 Do we still need the American Revolution?
a) Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, 180-207.
b) Philip Mead, “Walking the Freedom Trail,” Common-place 8.1 (Oct. 2007):
http://www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/talk/
c) Benjamin Carp, “Clio Takes a Look at 2009 Tea Parties,” Publick Occurrences
2.0 (10 April 2009): http://www.common-place.org/pasley/?p=1420
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d) Ira Stoll, “Time for a Tea Party?,” Forbes.com (14 April 209):
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/14/tea-party-gingrich-republican-governmentopinions-contributors-market.html
e) Benjamin Carp, “Nice Party, But Not So Revolutionary,” Washington Post (19
April 2009): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/04/17/AR2009041702664.html
RESPONSE: Optional/make-up.
EXAM WEEK
F 5/8 FINAL PAPER DUE by 5 p.m. to Vollum 124