Some Possible Themes for US HIST 1

American Diversity

The diversity of the American people and the relationships among different groups. The roles of race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the history of the United States.

 

American Identity

Views of the American national character and ideas about American exceptionalism. Recognizing regional differences within the context of what it means to be an American.

 

Culture

Diverse individual and collective expressions through literature, art, philosophy, music, theater, and film throughout U.S. history. Popular culture and the dimensions of cultural conflict within American society.

 

Demographic Changes

Changes in birth, marriage, and death rates; life expectancy and family patterns; population size and density. The economic, social, and political effects of immigration, internal migration, and migration networks.

 

Economic Transformations

Changes in trade, commerce, and technology across time. The effects of capitalist development, labor and unions, and consumerism.

 

Environment

Ideas about the consumption and conservation of natural resources. The impact of population growth, industrialization, pollution, and urban and suburban expansion.

 

Globalization

Engagement with the rest of the world from the fifteenth century to the present: colonialism, mercantilism, global hegemony, development of markets, imperialism, and cultural exchange.

 

Politics and Citizenship

Colonial and revolutionary legacies, American political traditions, growth of democracy, and the development of the modern state. Defining citizenship; struggles for civil rights.

 

Reform

Diverse movements focusing on a broad range of issues, including antislavery, education, labor, temperance, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, war, public health, and government.

 

Religion

The variety of religious beliefs and practices in America from prehistory to the twenty-first century; influence of religion on politics, economics, and society.

 

Slavery and Its Legacies in North America

Systems of slave labor and other forms of unfree labor (e.g., indentured servitude, contract labor) in Native American societies, the Atlantic World, and the American South and West. The economics of slavery and its racial dimensions. Patterns of resistance and the long-term economic, political, and social effects of slavery.

 

War and Diplomacy

Armed conflict from the precolonial period to the twenty-first century; impact of war on American foreign policy and on politics, economy, and society.

Some Possible Eras for US HIST 1

 

Pre-Columbian Societies

Early inhabitants of the Americas

• American Indian empires in Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi Valley
• American Indian cultures of North America at the time of European contact

 

Transatlantic Encounters and Colonial Beginnings, 1492–1690

• First European contacts with Native Americans
• Spain’s empire in North America
• French colonization of Canada
• English settlement of New England, the Mid-Atlantic region, and the South
• From servitude to slavery in the Chesapeake region
• Religious diversity in the American colonies
• Resistance to colonial authority: Bacon’s Rebellion, the Glorious Revolution, and the Pueblo Revolt

 

Colonial North America, 1690–1754

• Population growth and immigration
• Transatlantic trade and the growth of seaports
• The eighteenth-century back country
• Growth of plantation economies and slave societies
• The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening
• Colonial governments and imperial policy in British North America

 

The American Revolutionary Era, 1754–1789

• The French and Indian War
• The Imperial Crisis and resistance to Britain
• The War for Independence
• State constitutions and the Articles of Confederation
• The federal Constitution

 

The Early Republic, 1789–1815

• Washington, Hamilton, and the shaping of the national government
• Emergence of political parties: Federalists and Republicans
• Republican Motherhood and education for women
• Beginnings of the Second Great Awakening
• Significance of Jefferson’s presidency
• Expansion into the trans-Appalachian West; American Indian resistance
• Growth of slavery and free Black communities
• The War of 1812 and its consequences

 

The Transformation of Economy and Society in Antebellum America

• The transportation revolution and creation of a national market economy
• Beginnings of industrialization and changes in social and class structures
• Immigration and nativist reaction
• Planters, yeoman farmers, and slaves in the cotton South

 

The Transformation of Politics in Antebellum America

• Emergence of the second party system
• Federal authority and its opponents: judicial federalism, the Bank War, tariff controversy, and states’
• rights debates
• Jacksonian democracy and its successes and limitations

 

Religion, Reform, and Renaissance in Antebellum America

• Evangelical Protestant revivalism
• Social reforms
• Ideals of domesticity
• Transcendentalism and utopian communities
• American Renaissance: literary and artistic expressions

 

Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny

• Forced removal of American Indians to the trans-Mississippi West
• Western migration and cultural interactions
• Territorial acquisitions
• Early U.S. imperialism: the Mexican War

 

The Crisis of the Union

• Pro- and antislavery arguments and conflicts
• Compromise of 1850 and popular sovereignty
• The Kansas–Nebraska Act and the emergence of the Republican Party
• Abraham Lincoln, the election of 1860, and secession
• Chapter 1

 

Civil War

• Two societies at war: mobilization, resources, and internal dissent
• Military strategies and foreign diplomacy
• Emancipation and the role of African Americans in the war
• Social, political, and economic effects of war in the North, South, and West

 

Reconstruction

• Presidential and Radical Reconstruction
• Southern state governments: aspirations, achievements, failures
• Role of African Americans in politics, education, and the economy
• Compromise of 1877
• Impact of Reconstruction