TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

History 631.600: Reading Seminar in U.S. History to 1877

Fall Semester 2006

Thursdays 6:15 – 9:05 p.m.

Dr. Baum

The Reading Seminar in United States History is designed to augment students' reading lists and intellectual agenda for their further graduate studies or careers. This course has three main objectives: (1) to build a close-knit (but not homogenized) seminar group with a shared desire to grapple with the newest viewpoints and traditional interpretations of some main trends in American history from the founding of the English colonies through the Civil War and Reconstruction; (2) to make weekly reading and writing assignments exciting intellectual adventures rather than dull chores; and (3) to help assemble personal reading lists for graduate students preparing for departmental qualifying examinations, looking for possible thesis or dissertation topics in American history, and preparing for job interviews.

Reading Assignments:

Reading assignments for each week will be distributed as far ahead of the respective session as possible. All seminar members will read, in addition to the general or interpretative essays (listed under "required reading"), a book of their choice (selected from among those listed under "individual reading"). Available for purchase at the bookstore in the basement of the MSC is the 7th edition of the first volume of Interpretations of American History: Patterns and Perspectives, edited by Francis G. Couvares, Martha Saxton, Gerald N. Grob, and George Athan Billias.

Seminar Topics:

Instructors learn when they begin to offer courses at the university level that every course is a veritable shadow of what they would prefer it to be. The reason for this is transparent: time. The overbearing question when putting together a syllabus usually becomes not what to include but what to leave out. So it is with the present seminar. Time will not let us deal with all the topics that we would like to discuss, nor will it allow us to deal with an individual topic as we should like. Still, we will do our best. When the seminar comes to a close, all of us should know a good deal more about the history of the United States to 1877 than when the semester began.

AUGUST 31: Course Introduction

SEPTEMBER 7: The Puritans

14: American Indians

21: The Atlantic World and the Origins of Slavery

28: The American Revolution

OCTOBER 5: FIRST EXAM [Choice of one of two topic questions)

12: The Constitution

19: The Expanding Nation

26: Antebellum Reform

NOVEMBER 2: Slave Culture

NOVEMBER 9: SECOND EXAM [Choice of one of two topic questions)

NOVEMBER 16: The Civil War

23: [No class: Thanksgiving Day]

30: Reconstruction

December 7: THIRD EXAM (One question on one of the two topics)

Writing Assignments:

Students will write eight (8) critical review essays on the books that they select on the first class meeting from the reading lists. Of these eight essays, three of them will be from among the four books selected for the next four weeks; another three will be similarly selected from the following four weeks after the first exam; and two will be written for books selected for the last two weeks following the second exam. Your essays, using standard margins, Times New Roman or equivalent type faces or fonts, will be no less than and no more than four double-spaced typewritten pages in length, and will be due at the beginning of each seminar session. You will make copies (by either neatly "reducing" four pages to two pages photocopied "front and back" resulting in one sheet of paper or single-spacing the entire text to two pages "front and back" resulting in one sheet of paper) of your synopsis for distribution to all members of the seminar. You will give the ribbon copy (with no title page--just the four original double-spaced pages stapled together at the upper left-hand corner) along with a "reduced" or "single-spaced" version of the paper to the instructor at the beginning of class. At the top of your first page, enter the full name of the author, complete title of the book, place of publication, publisher's name, and date of publication. Your essay will have four parts (indicated by roman numerals "I," "II," "III," and "IV") in which you will: (I) summarize the narrative and interpretation of the book; (II) sum up briefly the criticism by reviewers or commentators; (III) place the book in its historiographical context guided by the readings in the Couvares, Saxton, Grob and Billias book; and (IV) outline possible new research directions prompted by the book. Write your name at the end of your essay.

I. Summarize the book by stating: (1) its general theme or thesis and considering its major strengths and weaknesses; (2) how it uses evidence to support its main argument or point of view; (3) how it advances our knowledge of the subject under study; and (4) the conclusions reached by the author. This is the most important part of your review.

II. Your synopsis will be strengthened (and therefore more useful to you and your classmates) by including summaries of comments by reviewers. Thus, you should consult reviews of the book in, at the very least, the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Reviews in American History, and Book Review Digest.

III. The required readings, selected for their scholarly significance, should give you the tools to place the book in some historiographical context. Does the book reflect a prevailing view or does it strike off in a unique direction? Can the book be associated with a dominant school of historical interpretation? How do the questions or points of view raised in the common reading relate to the theme of your book? Does it exemplify how history keeps being viewed through the lens of the present, or demonstrate that writing history is Aas contemporary as the headlines of today and as vital as the problems of tomorrow?@

IV. Does your book suggest that new or further questions about the topic need to be raised or explored? If so, what questions or ideas should now be investigated or researched?

Seminar Participation and Attendance:

Most of this course will involve discussion of the assigned readings. Your participation is not only crucial to the success of the seminar, but is a fundamental part of the learning process. Therefore, attendance at every class meeting is imperative.

Grades:

I am obliged, of course, to calculate grades. At times I wish that I did not have that obligation, because I have sensed that the grade book can be a detriment to the free exchange of ideas and information in the seminar. Unfortunately, the obligation remains. And what criteria will I use in calculating grades in History 631 besides your performance on the three examinations and the quality of your eight essays and corresponding class presentations? I will, of course, consider your overall contribution to classroom discussion. As mentioned, attendance is a consideration. The student who has cut a couple of classes is not apt to receive a strong final grade. Another consideration is whether your papers have been turned in on time and duplicated according to the instructions for distribution to seminar members. Finally, I will check at the end of the semester (on or after December 7, but no later than December 13) to discover whether you have in your possession copies of all reviews distributed by your classmates.

Grades will be given in accordance with the standard university system:

Excellent is 90-100, the letter being A;

Good is 80-89, the letter being B;

Satisfactory is 70-79, the letter being C;

Passing but not satisfactory is 60-69, the letter being D;

Failing is 0-59; the letter being F.

The calculation of the final course grade will be as follows:

8 seminar papers and presentations......................................................................................................................................6% each, totaling 48%

3 non-cumulative semester examinations……….................................................................................................................14% each, totaling 42%

Seminar participation, attendance, following directions in duplicating and distributing copies of papers for members of the seminar, and having in one's possession copies of all distributed seminar papers at the end of the semester........................................................................................10%

Late papers will not be accepted unless absence from a seminar session is an "authorized" absence as defined by the Texas A&M University Regulations.

Office Hours:

Dale Baum

210-A Melbern G. Glasscock Building

Wednesdays: 3 – 4:30 p.m. and Thursdays: 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. or by appointment.

Telephone: 845-7184 or messages for me to return your call may be left with the secretaries in the Department of History: 845-7151 or you may call me at my home: 695-1132.

E-mail: d-baum@tamu.edu.

Homepage: http://www.tamu.edu/baum/index.html

Students with Disabilities:

The "Americans with Disabilities Act" is a federal anti-discrimination law that provides civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this law requires that students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of their disabilities. If a student belies that they have a disability requiring accommodation, they should contact the Department of Student Life, Services for Students with Disabilities in Cain Hall (campus phone 845-1637). It is the responsibility of the student to discuss this matter with the professor.

Academic Dishonesty/Plagiarism:

Please consult the university's information regarding plagiarism (http:www.tamu.edu/aggiehonor). Plagiarism is a form of cheating. According to the aggiehonor Web site, "plagiarism" can be understood as "the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit." Plagiarism may involve uncited or uncredited use of papers or materials taken in whole or in part from other persons or references, such as from Internet Web sites, books, magazines, journals, or newspapers, or from other students' papers. If you are unsure of the meaning of this description, confer with the professor. Committing plagiarism will result in receiving an “0/F” on the assignment, possibly and “F” in the course, and may lead to expulsion from the university.

SEPT. 7: The Puritans: Orthodoxy or Diversity?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 22-60. [Recommended Reading: David D. Hall, "On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies," William and Mary Quarterly 44, 3d ser. (1987): 193-229.]

Individual Reading:

[* Perry Miller, The New England Mind (2 vols., 1939-1953)]

1. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (1956) E169.1.M628

2. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (1958) F67.W798

3. Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives (1988) F7. B75 1988

4. David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (1989) BR530.H35

5. Michael Walzer, Revolution of the Saints (1965) 274.2 W242r

6. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (1978) PS362.B43

7. Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul (1986) BV4208.V6 S75 1986

8. Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative (1983) BX9354.2 C34 1983

9. Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (1987) BF1576 .K37 1987

10. Paul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed (1974) BF1576.B6

11. Phillip Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory (1984) F7 .G87 1984

12. Norman Petit, The Heart Prepared (1966) 234.1 P511h

13. Michael W. Kaufmann, Institutional Individualism (1998)

14. David Cressy, Coming Over (1987) F7.C93 1987

15. Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston (1965) F73.4 .R8

16. Virginia DeJohn Anderson, New England’s Generation (1991) F7 .A53 1991

17. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives (1982) HQ1438.A11 U42 1982

18. Kai T. Ericson, Wayward Puritans (1966)

19. John Demos, A Little Commonwealth (1970) HQ557.P5 D4

20. Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town (1970) F74.D3 L83 1970

21. Darren Staloff, The Making of an American Thinking Class (1998) F67 .S8 1998

SEPT 14: American Indians: Resistance or Accommodation?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 61-99.

Individual Reading:

1. Gustav Jahoda, Images of Savages (1999)

2. Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian (1978)

3. Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties (1983)

4. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1969)

5. Gary B. Nash, Red, Black, and White (1974)

6. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America (1975)

7. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence (1973)

8. Wilcomb Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel (1957)

9. Daniel Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse (1992)

10. Joel Martin, Sacred Revolt (1991)

11. James Merrill, The Indians’ New World (1989)

12. Richard White, The Middle Ground (1991)

13. Jean M. O’Brien, Dispossession By Degrees (1997)

14. Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women, Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (1998)

15. Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance (1992)

SEPT. 21: The Atlantic World and the Origins of Slavery: Prejudice or Profit?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 100-136. [Recommended Reading: April Lee Hatfield, “Chesapeake Slavery in Atlantic Context,” in Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (2004), pp. 137-168.]

Individual Reading:

1. Peter Wood, Black Majority (1975)

2. Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (1999)

3. W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1896 [1969])

4. Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman, eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery (1987)

5. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (1969) or The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (1990)

6. Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972)

7. David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage (2006)

8. Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade (1992)

9. Barbara Solow, ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (1991)

10. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1832 (1975)

11. Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (1975)

12. T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, “Myne Own Ground” (1980)

13. Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs (1996)

14. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (1998)

15. Daniel P. Mannix, Black Cargoes (1960)

16. Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone (1998)

SEPT. 28: The American Revolution: Social or Ideological?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 137-176. [Recommended Reading: Morgan and Bailyn essays, pp. 3-31 and 289-310, in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, Essays on the American Revolution (1973.]

Individual Reading:

1. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926)

2. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967)]

3. Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (1976)

4. John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed (1976)

5. Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters (1980)

6. Alfred F. Young, Beyond the American Revolution (1993)

7. Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (1976)

8. Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (1982)

9. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic (1980)

10. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (1982)

11. Wallace Brown, The King's Friends (1965)

12. Merrill Jensen, The American Revolution Within America (1974)

13. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992)

14. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War (1979)

15. James K. Martin, Men in Rebellion (1973)

16. Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution (1981)

17. John R. Alden, A History of the American Revolution (1969)

18. Gary B. Nash, The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005)

OCT. 12: The Constitution: Conflict or Consensus?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 177-215. [Recommended Reading: Peter Onuf, “Reflections on the Founding: Constitutional Historiography in Bicentennial Perspective,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 46 (1989): 341-75.]

Individual Reading:

[*Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1935)]

1. Robert E. Brown, Charles Beard and the Constitution (1965)

2. Richard B. Morris, Forging of the Union (1987)

3. Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum (1985)

4. Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalists (1961)

5. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (1969)

6. Merrill Jensen, The New Nation (1950)

7. Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings (1996)

8. Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist (1981)

9. Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution (1967)

10. Peter Onuf, The Origins of the Federal Republic (1983)

11. H. James Henderson, Party Politics in the Continental Congress (1974)

12. Herbert J. Storing and Murray Dry, What the Anti-Federalists Were For (1981)

13. Richard Beeman, et al., eds., Beyond Confederation (1987)

14. Donald S. Lutz, Origins of American Constitutionalism (1988)

15. Andrew C. McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution (1962)

16. John Howe, The Changing Thought of John Adams (1966)

OCT. 19: The Expanding Nation: Pioneers or Planners?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 216-256.

Individual Reading:

1. Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution (1991)

2. Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier (1959)

3. Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (1957)

4. Daniel Boorstin, The Americans (1965)

5. Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America (rev. ed. 1978)

6. Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium (1978)

8. John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979)

9. Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power (1990)

10. Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism (1990)

11. Alan Kulikoff, The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism (1992)

12. Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires (1997)

13. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (1992)

14. Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest (1987)

15. Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River (1996)

16. Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost (1996)

OCT. 26: Antebellum Reform: Discipline or Liberation?

Required Reading: Interpretations of American History, 7th ed., I: 257-295. [Recommended Reading: John L. Thomas, "Romantic Reform in America, 1815-1865," American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 656-681; and Lawrence Frederick Kohl, "The Concept of Social Control and the History of Jacksonian America," Journal of the Early Republic 5 (Spring 1985): 21-34.]

Individual Reading:

1. David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum (1971)

2. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City (1971)

3. Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America (1980)

4. Robert Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (1970)

5. Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform (1968)

6. W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic (1979)

7. Paul Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic (1988)

8. James McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (1964)

9. Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers' Keepers (1960)

10. Ian Tyrell, Sobering Up (1979)

11. Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal (1976) or American Reformers 1815-1860 (1978)

12. Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860 (1938)

13. Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate (1978)