• Prologue: The Last Days of the United States

  • Abraham Lincoln, 1st Inaugural Address

  • (Optional) Abraham Lincoln, "House Divided" speech

• Unit 1: Indians and Europeans

  • Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chap. 13

  • Robert Filmer, Patriarcha (excerpt)

  • New England Primer

  • Isaac Watts, "Lord, I Am Vile, Conceived In Sin"

  • French missionary on the discipline of children among the North American Indians (the Algonquins specifically): Excerpt from the Jesuit Relations, 1633

  • #James Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial America" 

• Unit 2: Colonial Virginia and New England

  • *T.H. Breen, "Looking Out for Number One: Conflicting Cultural Values in Early 17th-Century Virginia"

  • John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity" (excerpt)

• Unit 3: Middle Colonies

  • *Patricia Bonomi, "The Middle Colonies: Embryo of a New Political Order"

  • William Penn, Preface to the "Frame of Government of Pennsylvania" (1682) 

• Unit 4: Origins of Slavery

  •  Recommended - as in not required but helpful in answering the discussion question.

    • #Oscar and Mary F. Handlin, "Origins of the Southern Labor System"

    • #Winthrop Jordan, "Modern Tensions and the Origins of American Slavery"

• Unit 5: Coming of the Revolution

  • John Locke, "Second Treatise on Government" (excerpts)

  • Isaac Barre's Speech to Parliament

  • Resolves of the First Continental Congress

  • Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America

  • The Declaration of Independence 

• Unit 6: Unintended Consequences of the Revolution

  • Thomas Paine, Common Sense

  • Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776

  • #Alfred Young, "George Robert Twelves Hewes (1742-1840): A Boston Shoemaker and the Memory of the American Revolution"

  • The Articles of Confederation

  • Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

• Unit 7: A Roof Without Walls

  • US Constitution

• Unit 8: Conflicting Visions

  • At least two of the three sets of documents listed for the Jefferson-Hamilton discussion question.

• Unit 9: Jeffersonian Experiment

  • Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural Address

• Unit 10: The Cotton Kingdom

  • #Elliott J. Gorn, "Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch": The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry

*=Documents available only to registered students in this course.
#=Documents that will only be accessible through the MU network (or another institutional network with JSTOR access).