#21 The United States 1815 – 1848

Thursday – 10:00 a.m.                                                    Winter Term 2009 (14 Weeks)
Coordinator:  Bob Glasser                                           Co-coordinator:  Mel Leventhal

Course Description
Three periods have dominated the study of history of the United States.  These are the Revolutionary War period (1763-89), the Civil War (1861-65), and The Great Depression and World War II (1929-45).  Our S/DG will cover one of the neglected periods, 1815-48.  We will use as our core book What Hath God Wrought—The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe, emeritus Professor of History at both Oxford University and UCLA.  Professor Howe has written an inclusive history of this period.  In addition to politics, war, and economics, we will discuss religion, technology, intellectual life, working life, and social arrangements.  Some of the topics covered are shown below.

In 1829 Andrew Jackson rode on horseback into Washington to be inaugurated as President.  Eight years later he left Washington by train.  This monumental change is representative of the massive changes that occurred in the United States in the years covered by this S/DG.  An equally monumental change is given by the title of our core book:What Hath God Wrought.  Theseare the words Samuel F. B. Morse sent as the first message over the telegraph in 1844.  The revolutions of transportation and communication are important parts of what we will study.

Some of the Topics that we will study are listed below
            Keep in mind that we will have fourteen weeks to study and discuss this long list of    events.
The conclusion of the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans
The Missouri Compromise
The Monroe Doctrine
The battle over the Second Bank of the United States
The forcible removal of the Indians from the Southeast to the Southwest
The development and expansion of the abolition movement; William Lloyd Garrison,                         Frederick Douglass and others
The Amistad incident
The Nullification crisis of 1832-1833
The expansion of the cotton economy and of slavery
The Erie Canal and other canals
The start and expansion of the railroads
The expansion and improvement of roads
The Second Great Awakening
The birth and expansion of Mormonism
The establishment of the Republic of Texas and its later annexation by the United                  States
The acquisition of Oregon
The Mexican War and the acquisition of the Southwest including California
The start of the California Gold Rush
The writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and others
The sectional differentiation of the economy
The invention and use of the telegraph
The expansion of newspapers and other periodicals
The emergence of the Whig, Free Soil, and Republican parties
The beginnings of the feminist movement; the Seneca Falls convention
The organization of the household and the lives of women

            All of the above events occurred during the presidencies of James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin van Buren, John Tyler, and James Knox Polk.  A few of the other important political figures of the times are Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster.
Our core book, What Hath God Wrought, has twenty chapters.  I have divided it into fourteen coherent topics for the fourteen weeks of the S/DG.

Bibliography
There is vast literature on all the aspects of American history that we will cover.  Our core book has a bibliographical essay of twenty two pages.  I counted the number of books referred to on one of the twenty two pages.  There were 54 books.

Some books that I have read myself are:
Schlesinger, Arthur.  The Age of Jackson.  Little, 1945.
Wilentz, Sean.  The Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln.  Norton, 2005.
Rutland, Robert A.  James Madison, The Founding Father.  Macmillan, 1987.
Morrison, Samuel Elliot.  The Oxford History of the American People, Volume Two:            1789 Through Reconstruction.  Meridian, 1965.
Davis, David Brion.  Inhuman Bondage—The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World.             Oxford, 2006.