NOTE: All dates and assignments are subject to change. Please be aware of any announcements made in class, via the course website, or on Blackboard.

All readings are due on the date listed below. Each student is responsible for locating any reading in a journal or the Early American Imprints database. Brief selections from books will be available as e-reserves on the course Blackboard site.

Week 1 Introduction to the Course

Sept. 4 Thinking about the Revolution

• Wood, Radicalism, pp. 3-8
• “Roundtable: The American Revolution Reborn,” Common-place 14, no. 3
  • Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman, “Introduction: The Conception of a Conference”
  • Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Revolution Reborn: Revolution and Civil War”
  • Browse other essays

Week 2 Colonial America and the Seven Years War

Sept. 8 Colonial Society

• Wood, Radicalism, pp. 11-92

Sept. 11 Seven Years War

• George Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, May 29, 1754
• Jacob Nicolas Moreau, A Memorial Containing a Summary View of the Facts (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1757), Early American Imprints, ser. 1, no. 7896, 70-86.

Week 3 Imperial Crisis I

Sept. 15 Stamp Act Crisis

• “An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados” (Philadelphia, 1766), Early American Imprints, ser. 1, no. 10283

Sept. 18 Stamp Act research day

• Bring your laptop to class

Week 4 Imperial Crisis II

Sept. 22 Ideology in Colonial America

• Wood, Radicalism, pp. 95-168
• Kerber, Women of the Republic, ch. 1

Sept. 25 Taxes and Boycotts
Twitter assignment due at beginning of class.

Week 5 Dividing Lines

Sept. 29 The Protests of Ordinary Men and Women

• Alfred F. Young, “George Robert Twelves Hewes (1742-1840): A Boston Shoemaker and the Memory of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 38, no. 4 (1981): 561-623

Oct. 2 Patriots and Loyalists

• Samuel Seabury, Free Thoughts, on the Proceedings of the Congress at Philadelphia (New York: [James Rivington], 1774, Early American Imprints, ser. 1, no. 13602
• Continental Association (1774)

Week 6 The Approach of War

Oct. 6 The rage militaire of 1775

• Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill: IEAHC, University of North Carolina Press, 1979), Prologue and Ch. 1 (3-53)
• Harold Gill and George M. Curtis III, eds., A Man Apart: The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-1781 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), Ch. 3, 100-27

Oct. 9 Stalemate

• Maier, American Scripture, Introduction, ch. 1

Week 7 The Move Toward Independence

Oct. 13 How common was Common Sense?

• Maier, American Scripture, ch. 2
• Thomas Paine, Common Sense, excerpts

Oct. 16 Declaring Independence

• Maier, American Scripture, ch. 3 (97-153)
• Declaration of Independence

Week 8 Revolutionary War I

Oct. 20 Women in Conflict: Mary Silliman’s War

• Kerber, Women of the Republic, ch. 2-3

Oct. 23 The War Moves South

• 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, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), pp. 191-214

Week 9 Revolutionary War II

Oct. 27 Creating the State Governments

• Constitution of Massachusetts (1780)
• Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776)

Oct. 30 Public History in Action: Visit to Massachusetts Historical Society

Week 10 A Revolutionary Settlement

Nov. 3 A Perpetual Union?

• Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (1781)

Nov. 6 Debt and Credit

• Holton, Unruly Americans, pp. 3-123

Week 11 A New Society?

Nov. 10 Democratization

• Wood, Radicalism, pp. 229-305

Nov. 13 Consolidation

• Holton, Unruly Americans, pp. 127-223

Week 12 Replacing the Articles

Nov. 17 The Constitution

• Holton, Unruly Americans, pp. 227-78
• United States Constitution (1787)

Nov. 20 Ratification: In-class debate

• Bill of Rights

Week 13 Winners and Losers

Nov. 24 Who really lost the American Revolution?

• Kerber, Women of the Republic, ch. 6
• Maya Jasanoff, “The Other Side of Revolution: Loyalists in the British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 65, no. 2 (2008): 205-232
• Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 271-91

Nov. 27  NO CLASS: Thanksgiving Break

Week 14 Beginnings of the Republic

Dec. 1 New Politics for a New Republic

• Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), ch. 1

Dec. 4 Atlantic Contexts

• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)
• Declaration of Independence of Haiti (1804)
• Address of Simón Bolivár at the Congress of Angostura (1819)

Week 15 Consequences

Dec. 8 Reverberations

• Kerber, Women of the Republic, chs. 7-9
• David S. Shields and Fredrika J. Teute, “The Republican Court and the Historiography of a Women’s Domain in the Public Sphere,” Journal of the Early Republic 35, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 169-183

Dec. 11 The Enduring Legacy

• Maier, American Scripture, ch. 4
• Wood, Radicalism, pp. 347-69

Week 16 Conclusion

Dec. 15 The Revolution Today

• Bring in an example of the American Revolution in the news