History 67 |
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SCHEDULE OF CLASSESTop of Schedule Back to Portfolio Table of ContentsWEEK ONE9/4-9/6 IntroductionSpecial Topic: Is the Past a "Foreign Country"? Questions:
WEEK TWO9/9-9/13 Exploration and ConquestReading: Divine: ch. 1 & 2, 9/9 Dinnerstein & Jackson: ch. 1 & 2, 9/13 Special Topics:
WEEK THREE9/16-9/20 Colonial AmericaReading: Divine, ch. 3: 9/16 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 3, 4 & 5: 9/20 Special Topics:
WEEK FOUR9/23-9/27 Provincial AmericaReading: Divine, ch. 4: 9/23 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 6 & 7: 9/27 Special Topics:
WEEK FIVE9/30-10/4 The American RevolutionReading: Divine, ch. 5: 9/30 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 8: 10/4 Special Topics:
WEEK SIX10/7-10/11 The Early Republic, IReading: Divine, ch. 6: 10/7 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 9 & 10: 10/11 Special Topics:
WEEK SEVEN10/14-10/18 The Early Republic, IIReading: Divine, ch. 7 & 8: 10/14 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 11: 10/18 Special Topics:
WEEK EIGHT10/21 Mid Term Examination10/23-25 Economic Expansion Reading: Divine ch. 9: 10/23 Dinnerstein & Jackson, no assignment Special Topics:
WEEK NINE10/28-11/1 Jacksonian DemocracyReading: Divine, ch. 10: 10/28 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 12: 11/1 Special Topics:
WEEK TEN11/4-11/8 Domesticity and ReformReading: Divine, ch. 11: 11/4 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 13: 11/8 Special Topics:
WEEK ELEVEN11/11-11/15 Labor in America: Free and SlaveReading: Divine, ch. 12 & 13: 11/11 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 14 & 15: 11/15 Special Topics:
WEEK TWELVE11/18-11/22 Slavery and Sectionalism in the 1850sReading: Divine, ch. 14: 11/18 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 16 & 17: 11/22 Special Topics:
WEEK THIRTEEN11/25-11/27 Secession and Civil WarReading: Divine, ch. 15: 11/25 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 18: 11/27 Special Topics: The Republican Party and the South Questions:
WEEK FOURTEEN12/2-12/6 ReconstructionReading: Divine, ch. 16: 12/2 Dinnerstein & Jackson, ch. 19: 12/6 Special Topics:
WEEK FIFTEEN12/9-12-11 ReviewSpecial Assignment: Write a question
for the final examination. The class will review submissions for their
suitability as determined by such criteria as: clarity, scope, relevance,
and creativity.
V. Course Narrative and Some DocumentationTop of Narrative |
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WEEKS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 Back to Portfolio Table of Contents WEEK ONE Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week OneWe devoted Week One to establishing the ground rules for the course and getting the students to begin thinking about what it means to study history. The handout for the Friday class, "History and Historians," is the introductory essay from a widely used undergraduate text. It examines the reasons why historians differ when they write about the past. By teaching the students that historical interpretations are as diverse as historians themselves, I hoped to remind them of the existence of diversity in the present and open their eyes to the importance of this diversity to historical thinking. This lesson was also brought home by a discussion of the difference between history and memory on Friday. Some students explained this difference by distinguishing between the individualistic nature of "memory" and the collective features of "history" but many had difficulty grasping the interpretive similarities of history and memory.Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK TWO Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week TwoIn Week Two I focused my presentations on the themes of diversity and migration. We began the week by examining the legend of Columbus, considering not only what he accomplished and why but also his changing reputation over time. Was Columbus a hero or a villain? Did he conquer the Americas and if so, what does it mean to say that he did? I encouraged the students to consider how the text deals with this question, pointing out to them a passage that argues for the "agency" of blacks, Native Americans, and even women in North and Central America. It was my intention to have my students associate diversity with the concept of power and consider the importance in history of this relationship. On Wednesday I turned more to an examination of migration, looking at the conditions prevailing in 16th and 17th century England that induced some to migrate, at first to places like Holland and Ireland and then to the New World. We also took under consideration the attractions of North America. In other words, I introduced them to the "push-pull" theory of migration . Diversity was not left entirely aside, as I also gave a brief outline of David Hackett Fischer's thesis about the differing regional origins of the settlers in New England, the Chesapeake, the Middle Colonies, and the back country.On Friday, Mr. Wilson returned to the theme of freedom, focusing his teaching on the question in the syllabus about the sources and limits of freedom in the American colonies. He stressed the importance of the regional differences in their approach to religious freedom. For the second week in a row we used breakouts for the first 30 minutes. There was general student involvement in the small groups and a good cross-section of participation in the reconvened class of the whole. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK THREE Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week ThreeDuring Week Three we emphasized two themes in our teaching: freedom and diversity. On Monday I asked the students to interpret the geography of a 17th century New England town for the lessons it might teach about the relationship between the individual and the group in Puritan society. Using overheads that show the nucleated layout of an open field town (e.g. Sudbury and Andover, Mass), I was able to elicit from the students the conclusion that by placing their houses so close together, the Puritans discouraged individual freedom in favor of group conformity. I pointed out that the strong inter-generational relationship between the nuclear household and the extended family contributed to the sense of community. We then examined how and why the residents of nucleated towns dispersed over three or four generations, and we discussed the ramifications of this dispersal for the Puritan concept and practice of community. Using the textbook as our source, we also contrasted New England town and family life with that in the Chesapeake where high rates of mortality and a plantation economy made it more difficult to maintain a sense of community.On Wednesday I talked about the Puritan concept of covenant to reinforce the conclusion reached on Monday that individual freedom was not valued in 17th century New England society. I also intended my remarks on Puritan social and religious thought to place the Salem witch trials into a historical context. Based on what they had read in the text, the students discussed the meaning of these trials by considering questions that required them to try their hand at historical thinking. Were they the result of a growing economic tension in Salem between the progressive Town and the conservative Village? Did anxiety about change over time express itself as animosity toward women or people who were viewed as outsiders? The lecture/discussion format of the Monday and Wednesday classes was once again replaced on Friday with discussion. Mr. Wilson distributed a handout that summarized the main conclusions about diversity in each of the week's readings (both text and reader). We asked the five small discussion groups to examine one of the entries on this handout which they did for about twenty minutes. When we reconvened into a class as a whole, we had enough time to consider the first two entries on this handout, focusing on the contest for cultural supremacy in the colonies among the English, the Africans, and the different tribes of Native Americans. The students had no difficulty relating to the concept of cultural identity that we were teaching. There was active participation by all students during the breakouts and about half during the general discussion. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK FOUR Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week FourDuring Week Four my intent was to show how the communal, interdependent world of the original settlers began to break down in the eighteenth century. I did this by exploring two of themes in the course: diversity and migration. On Monday I invited the students to consider the changing religious environment in America, pointing out how many denominations splintered into progressive and conservative subgroups (the New Lights vs. the Old Lights) and how other denominations appeared on the scene (e.g. Methodists). I spent a few minutes talking about the Great Awakening and its most famous theologian, Jonathan Edwards. My objective here was to show how he struggled with the need for more religious enthusiasm (passion) without sacrificing the Puritan orthodoxies (predestination) of old. However, by introducing more emotion into the American religious equation, Edwards opened the door wider to religious individualism and facilitated challenges to social and theological traditions.The second class of the week was devoted to a consideration of immigration and internal migration. We looked at how the American people became more diversified in the eighteenth century thanks to the coming of settlers from Scotland, northern Ireland (Scots Irish), Germany, and London. I talked about the institution of indentured servitude that both limited and enhanced opportunity for those willing to assume the risks of trans-Atlantic relocation. As a result of increased geographic mobility, Americans were not only more diverse but also more aware of each other as they broke or at least stretched the bonds of localism. On Friday Mr. Wilson and I tried to tie these strands together by introducing the concept of identity. He pointed out that as Americans from different regions came into contact with each other more and more and as they reshuffled their religious loyalties and associations, it began to become apparent that they had more in common with each other than with those in the mother land. We used another handout to give the small discussion groups something to focus on, but unlike the week before, we used short questions instead of long quotes on the handout, making it easier to work with. He and I also sat in on two of the four small group discussions that took up the first 25 minutes of class. We plan to rotate among the small groups throughout the rest of the semester. In the small group with which I worked, we discussed the differences between the political cultures in England and America. I wanted them to analyze the concept of a"political culture," and to see how American political culture in the eighteenth century was less deferential and more prone to conflict than that in the mother country because the English system of mixed government made less sense in America. In the colonies the power of the Crown was more abstract than real, and there was no established nobility. The development and recognition of an American political culture strengthened the identification of Americans with each other even as it estranged them from Britain. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK FIVE Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week FiveDuring Week Five I employed three different types of teaching strategies. On Monday I gave a lecture that set the agenda for the week; on Wednesday I taught the class by the Socratic method, using the concept of sovereignty as my organizational framework; on Friday, Mr. Wilson conducted a quick review session before we broke into small groups to discuss the questions he prepared.In Monday's lecture I used Gary Nash's Urban Crucible as my principal source to explain why Boston was more inclined to revolt than Philadelphia by 1760. In addition, I wanted to introduce the students to the importance of social class as a measure of diversity in American society and as a way to understand political and economic developments in the past. By arguing that between 1690 and 1763 Boston's working men and women experienced far more hardship at the hands of Britain and her colonial representatives than their peers in Philadelphia, I also made a case for understanding the coming of the American Revolution in terms of the differences as well as the similarities among Americans. The discussion of sovereignty on Wednesday was designed to teach the students about the assumptions shared by British and American subjects on the subject of government in the 18th century and to show how the Americans gradually reached the conclusion that the Crown and Parliament no longer deserved their allegiance. We revisited the concept of virtual representation to see how the British believed the Americans to be part of larger polity in which there was no need to distinguish between minority rights and majority interests. We also looked at the writings of John Locke to understand how the patriots borrowed from English precedent to justify their ultimate decision to break with England. Because I was not satisfied with the class, I asked the students to write a one minute paper on Wednesday. This feedback revealed that more students than I anticipated were confident that they understood the lesson. But some admitted to being still in the dark, especially on the meaning and significance of sovereignty. In Friday's review Mr. Wilson began by asking the students to define sovereignty (legitimate authority) and explain why the Americans eventually decided that the Crown and Parliament could no longer be considered sovereign in America (because of their unjust, even tyrannical policies after 1765). He also reviewed the idea that Americans were beginning to acknowledge the need to recognize minority rights. He did this by having the students rethink the importance of the Great Awakening and the debate over virtual versus actual representation, both of which suggest the beginnings of a more individualistic world view. Following this question and answer session, we broke into small groups to consider the two questions for the week. In private conversations earlier in the week Mr. Wilson and I decided that we needed to make the questions for the subgroups as simple and direct as possible. Hence the handout we distributed listed only two questions, one from the syllabus and the second written by Mr. Wilson. In the subgroup that I joined we considered the question from the syllabus which read: Did the Americans consider themselves to be revolutionaries? The students came up with the thought that the Americans were really "reluctant revolutionaries" because they wanted to work within the British political system and decided in favor of independence only when it became apparent that they could not do so. |
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Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK SIX Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week SixMy objective for Week Six was to further develop the themes of freedom and diversity through a treatment of the state and federal constitutions written between 1776 and 1787. I posed three questions at the beginning of class on Monday that we discussed during that class and the next one on Wednesday. They were: (1) What kinds of government did the patriots create in the new states after 1776? Did these governments reflect an individualistic or communal world view? (2) Where did sovereignty go once the colonists denied the sovereignty of Parliament and the Crown? Where did they think legitimate authority should reside? (3) What became of mixed government? In the absence of a nobility or King, what structure did Americans envision for their new governments?I developed these themes in class by discussing the ideology of utopian republicanism that, according to Gordon Wood, shaped the first generation of state constitutions written between 1776 and 1780. I was particularly interested in teaching the students that this ideology emphasized a communal rather than an individualistic or interest group concept of government. I did this by explaining how most states gave more power to legislatures or assemblies and less to governors in their first constitutions. I also pointed out that the writers of these first state constitutions did not believe that the people (i.e. the majority) could be just as "tyrannical" as the King. However, when they discovered their mistake, they revised their thinking in the second generation of state constitutions, restoring some balance to governmental design. This lesson led us to consider how Americans replaced mixed government by the idea of checks and balances and how a concept of popular sovereignty was a prerequisite for the separation of powers. To show that Americans now invested sovereignty in the people, I pointed out that they relied on constitutional conventions ("the people out-of-doors") to establish their new governments. I taught these classes via a combination of lecture and discussion (mainly question and answer). I asked Mr. Wilson to review the main points in class on Friday when I would attending the Oral History Association's convention. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK SEVEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week SevenThe themes of freedom and diversity were incorporated into the first two classes this week through a consideration of American politics in the 1790s. I wanted the students to learn how and why a competitive political environment emerged in the new nation, leading to the formation of two political parties, the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. We began by identifying the organizational features that distinguish parties from factions such as having a recognizable ideology and a broad base of support. The students also learned that political parties perform certain functions (e.g. nominating candidates or managing the government if elected) and must have a structure or bureaucracy to survive. I argued that for political parties to form in the United States Americans had to become aware of the differences among them, a realization that the Constitution and the new federal government help to develop. By the same token, I pointed out that Americans in the 1790s were suspicious of diversity, fearing that those who didn't see the world just as they did were a threat to political stability. In other words, at this stage in American political history there was no concept of the "loyal opposition."On Monday and Wednesday I quizzed the students about the different political philosophies of Hamilton and Jefferson. They had read the textbook just carefully enough to come up with the observation that Hamilton favored a stronger central government than Jefferson, a point that we fleshed out by contrasting their views on the role of the federal government in the economy (e.g. assumption of the state debts and funding the debt at par). We also discussed Hamilton's and Jefferson's feelings about relations with Britain and France. This discussion centered around a question on the syllabus that asked the students to explain the role of these two nations in American domestic and foreign policy in the 1790s (e.g. Jay's Treaty and the Alien and Sedition Acts) . Running through both these lessons was the idea that in the new republic there was an ongoing debate about the ramifications of political independence and economic growth for civic virtue and individual freedom. America was moving further and further away from its communal past toward a nation that would value economic self-interest and practice capitalism. In anticipation of the preliminary examination scheduled for the following next Monday, Friday's class was devoted to a reconsideration of the three basic themes of the course: freedom, diversity, and migration. We divided the class into three subgroups and assigned one of the themes to each. In the subgroup with which I worked, the students rediscovered the most important measures and sources of diversity in colonial America (religion, region, class, race, and ethnicity) and tried to assess the significance of each. Mr. Wilson's group talked about the growth of individual freedom in the 18th century, looking in particular once again at the Great Awakening. We also made a special effort to give each subgroup a chance to report on their findings in the last two minutes of class. The students seem to find this task daunting because it requires some of them to speak for others, a task which may be difficult because they are so accustomed to being treated as individuals. They are not bad reporters but they resist doing more than just giving an account of what went on. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative, Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week Seven WEEK EIGHT Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week EightWeek eight began with a mid-term examination, the purpose of which was to determine how much the students are learning from their journal writing and how well they could manipulate the major course themes. The results were not very reassuring. Taken directly from the syllabus, the four questions in Part I were among those most often answered by students in their journals, and while most have managed to deal with such questions fairly well in their journals, they had much more trouble with them on the exam. For example, about half chose to answer the question that asked if history was just about dates and facts; many responded by saying that it was much more than that, but they had difficulty explaining why. Only one or two said that history was about continuity and change over time, and even though most understood that historians interpret the past, they seemed largely unaware that interpretations also change over time. In Part II the students were asked a question that required them to apply one or more of the three course themes to a quote from the textbook about the Great Awakening. Most recognized that freedom and diversity were more important to understanding the Great Awakening than migration, but once again the vast majority could not explain why. They need more practice at interpretation.After the mid term I began a short segment on economic expansion. On Wednesday I asked the students to consider how the transportation revolution before the Civil War encouraged the development of a market economy in the United States and how this affected women, blacks, immigrants, and native Americans differentially. The point of the lesson was to explore the relationship between the rise of American capitalism and the uneven course of personal freedom. An essay about the Dartmouth College case from the Dinnerstein and Jackson reader formed the basis for Friday's discussions. It was the purpose of this lesson to show how important education was becoming to economic growth and how the incipient distinction between public and private corporations was important for American social and economic institutions. In an increasingly heterogeneous and open society distinguishing between public and private was not so much a matter of choice as necessity. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK NINE Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week NineWeek Nine began with a consideration of the first question for the week on the syllabus. It asks: "In what ways was the United States a land of equal opportunity by the 1830s? In what ways was it not? Explain." Derived from the discussion in the text of economic conditions and political ideology in Jacksonian America, the question speaks to the theme of freedom and its changing meaning. In class the students explored the extent to which individual wealth had replaced family or community connections as the most important measure of distinction by the 1830s; the changing role of social class in an economy that was increasingly dependent on wage labor; the egalitarian spirit of the age, as described by Alexis de Tocqueville; and such expressions of this democratic spirit as Greek Revival architecture and the paintings of Thomas Cole. I showed them slides of public buildings in the Greek Revival style, such as state houses and schools, and Thomas Cole's set of paintings entitled "The Voyage of Life" all of which give form to the conflict in Jacksonian thought between such abstract ideas as freedom and order, stability and change.We then turned to an examination of the degree to which Jacksonian politics can best be understood as an exercise in opportunism or a contest between meaningful alternatives for American society. Historians have long debated whether the new political parties that emerged in the 1830s were more alike than different, and we took up this question by looking at their attitudes about the role of government in the life of the nation. To get this discussion started I asked the students to come prepared on Wednesday to say what was important about the presidential elections of 1824 and 1828. I used these elections to show how and why the Democratic Party emerged in the 1820s and as a lead-in to a discussion of John C. Calhoun and his support for states-rights and nullification. On Wednesday it quickly became apparent that the students knew the facts about the two elections far better than they understood the meaning and significance of nullification. To give them a better grasp of the similarities and differences among the political parties in the Age of Jackson, we divided the class into two discussion groups on Friday and asked one to think about the Whig position on government involvement and the other to work on the Democrats' views about the same question. We also decided to split the class into only two groups because in response to a questionnaire about the strengths and weaknesses of the course to date that we asked the students to complete on October 28th, some said that the Friday discussion groups worked best when one of the instructors was participating. In general, the students reported that they liked the class, both the lectures and discussions, but that they wanted the two teachers to provide leadership in the small groups, making certain to keep them focused and to involve everyone. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK TEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week TenIn week ten we examined the themes of the course through the prism of ante-bellum social reform. This topic lends itself to a consideration of freedom and diversity more than migration, but in one way or another we dealt with them all. On Monday I began by putting two lists of reforms on the blackboard. In one I included abolitionism, feminism, and utopianism; in the other I placed temperance, prison, and common school reform. I asked the class to comment on whether these reforms were intended to increase or decrease personal freedom in American society. It was obvious to the students that reformers hoped to increase personal freedom by abolishing slavery and fighting for women's rights. What was less obvious was whether reformers expected to enhance personal freedom by forming utopian communities, establishing penitentiaries, restricting or prohibiting the sale of alcohol, or organizing public schools. Each could be said to have a repressive side, restricting the individual's freedom of choice. However, each was designed to teach self-control, a lesson that I tried to teach by posing questions about the rise of capitalism and the anxieties that it provoked among middle-class Americans who feared that a nation of risk-takers would soon careen out of control. Wednesday's class focused in particular on the reasons for the coming of a reform era in the generation before the Civil War. Setting aside for the moment abolitionism and feminism, I used a previous lesson about the building of the Erie Canal to associate reform with such developments as westward expansion, immigration, and urbanization. The students had little trouble understanding how the social and economic changes brought about in upstate New York by the canal could lead at first to religious revivalism which was intended to fortify the individual against lapses in self-control. When the fear of God failed to eradicate sin, reformers turned to more specific evils such as crime or ignorance, hoping that prisons and schools would teach the lessons of self-control. I also spent a few minutes talking about the Oneida community and John Humphrey Noyes who like many other utopians of his time believed that individual freedom could only be achieved in a group context. For example, the practice of complex marriage at Oneida combined personal freedom with collective responsibility in the making and raising of children.On Friday, the class broke into two groups and discussed the essay in Dinnerstein and Jackson by Thomas Dublin on the women who worked in the Lowell textile mills as well as the larger question of personal freedom in ante-bellum reform. In my group there was a lively conversation about the relationship between freedom and order. At what point, we asked ourselves, does individual freedom become license? When do group norms become oppressive? The essay by Dublin led us to consider how the solidarity of the women workers in Lowell enabled them to have more control over their own destiny than would have been the case had each acted on her own. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK ELEVEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week ElevenWork this week began with a class devoted to the origins of the Mormons. I chose to feature them because their early history exemplifies all three themes in the course: freedom, diversity, and migration. In my lecture and through the questions that I posed to the students during my presentation I emphasized the geographical mobility of the Mormons, an important part of their early history that was in part forced on them. Their distinctive ways prompted disapproval by their neighbors and ultimately induced them to isolate themselves in a remote desert kingdom. One point of the class was to demonstrate that in the United States there were (and are) limits to the practice of religious freedom. In the Reynolds case that was argued in the 1840s the Supreme Court ultimately decided that religious freedom (i.e. polygamy) cannot violate general community standards. In the class I also pointed out some of the dualisms in Mormon thought and institutions that arose from their belief in individual perfectibility and their practice of group cohesion. For example, the Mormons acknowledged the free will of the individual while accepting at the same time the idea of spiritual equality.On Wednesday I moved the class on to a consideration of the ideology of Manifest Destiny. We defined it and then examined its meaning for the economic and political life of the nation. Central to this discussion were the Oregon and Texas questions. I used an overhead of the disputed territory in the northwest to facilitate a consideration of the role of Manifest Destiny in American foreign relations. We then turned to the story of Texas's annexation. I asked the class to explain why the United States ultimately chose not to absorb all of Mexico after the Mexican-American War which led us to look at the relationship between Manifest Destiny and racism. As one student pointed out, the United States decided that it would not be easy to assimilate the Mexican nation. This led us in turn to look at the role of slavery in westward expansion. I showed an overhead which illustrates the migration of slavery south and west between 1820 and 1860, a movement that was driven by the concomitant spread of cotton cultivation. In our breakout discussions on Friday we used the text's treatment of slave institutions (e.g. religion and the family) and an essay in the Dinnerestein Jackson reader on the Florida slave codes to examine the extent to which slavery dehumanized its victims. One group focused on the fact that the codes limited the freedom of masters as well as slaves while the other considered how the codes recognized the reciprocity involved in slave master relations. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK TWELVE Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week TwelveOur examination of the politics of slavery began with a look at the two great compromises of 1820 and 1850. Using overheads to illustrate the geographic terms and political ramifications of these deals, I asked the class to describe the details of the two compromises and explain their meaning. The students managed to come up with most of the particulars for the Compromise of 1820 but they were much less knowledgeable about the Compromise of 1850. At the end of class on Monday I asked them to come on Wednesday prepared to say what the South got out of the Compromise of 1850 in exchange for its concessions on the admission of California as a free state and the use of popular sovereignty on the slave question in the New Mexico and Utah territories. What I had in mind, of course, was the Fugitive Slave Law that Congress enacted in 1850. In teaching the course theme of freedom I also tried to show how the Democratic Party, beginning in the 1830s, tried to finesse the issue of slavery in order to develop and maintain a national constituency. I wanted the class to understand that in American politics values like freedom sometimes get sacrificed to political expediency.On Wednesday the class did not come prepared to discuss the Fugitive Slave Law and had to be educated about its role in the Compromise of 1850. In my presentation I used this law as a segue between the work of the abolitionists before 1850 and the events (Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott decision, and election of 1860) that carried the nation to war between 1850 and 1861. In speaking about the abolitionists I concentrated on the difference between reformers like William Lloyd Garrison who tried to bring about the demise of slavery by characterizing its practice as a sin and those like James Birney who believed that the problem of slavery required a political solution. This distinction is important to the course theme of freedom because it shows how even the abolitionists differed when it came to deciding whether the slave holders should be persuaded or forced to abandon the peculiar institution. The Friday discussion focused on the 1850s and asked the students to consider why the differences that would eventually lead to war came to a head in the 1850s. After thirty years of keeping the lid on the slavery question, why were Americans no longer able to do so in the 1850s? This is a sophisticated historical question that gave the students trouble. Most had not identified one explanation offered by the text that the collapse of the Whig party and the old two party system opened the door to regional parties (e.g. the Republicans) and inter-sectional confrontation. But some students were prepared to defend the text's other argument that cultural differences between the north and south could no longer be ignored by the 1850s. The students also had before them a variation on this interpretation in an article by Paul Finkelman about slaves in Illinois that was assigned for the week in the course reader. It demonstrates how jurists and legislators in Illinois began to disagree in the 1850s about the status of fugitive slaves and slaves brought by their masters to Illinois from slave states. In a swing state like Illinois legislators were unwilling to jeopardize their careers by taking a controversial stand but jurists were no longer willing to tolerate the kidnapping of blacks or slave ownership even by masters who were only visiting. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK THIRTEEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week ThirteenWith only two classes this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I tried to focus the students' attention on the political problem of slavery by returning to the question posed on Friday about the timing of the sectional crisis and the coming of the Civil War. In my presentation on Monday I argued that the 1850s was a pivotal decade because the Whigs and the Democrats could no longer accommodate the growing intensity and diversity of opinion on the subject of slavery's westward expansion. I made this point by talking about the political groups that came together during the decade to form the Republican Party and by asking the students to identify the border states that played such an important role both before and during the "War of the Rebellion." Once the students had named those states, I asked them to tell me about their role in the war and the Emancipation Proclamation. Most were not aware that the Lincoln did not include the border states in his order freeing the slaves.On Wednesday Mr. Wilson showed selected sections of the Ken Burns' film The Civil War as a prelude to a discussion of what the term "total war" means. We wanted to get the students thinking about the tragedy of the Civil War as military event and as a prelude to a consideration of the long term impact of the war due to the successes and failures of Reconstruction. What did the war and its aftermath mean for equality of opportunity in the United States over the long term? Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK FOURTEEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week FourteenReconstruction was the topic for Week Fourteen, and my main objective in Monday's class was to make three generalizations about Reconstruction, all of which spoke to the course themes of freedom and diversity. First, I argued for the centrality to Reconstruction of African Americans. Reconstruction was all about trying to integrate them into American society and offer them opportunities comparable to those available to the white man. Second, I argued that race and class were interdependent in Reconstruction because equal opportunity for blacks was intimately tied to their economic situation. Finally, I argued that the federal government expanded its power over American life during Reconstruction, thereby transforming the relationship between the states and the national government and changing the meaning of American freedom.On Monday the class also began to examine the major civil rights acts and constitutional amendments adopted during Reconstruction. We looked in particular at the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866 and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. Based on this overview we proceeded on Wednesday to look in depth at the Fourteenth Amendment both as a watershed in constitutional history and as a reflection of its times. I emphasized the long term importance to civil rights of Section One by which states were prohibited from denying citizens due process and equal protection of the laws. We considered how Section Two forced the southern states to accept either reduced representation in Congress or offer the suffrage to black male citizens. This class emphasized in particular the paradox of forcing "freedom" on the South and the problems associated with reconciling freedom and diversity in American society. In Friday's discussion I picked up on this theme by asking the class toconsider whether the South lost the Civil War but "won" Reconstruction. One student said that the South had indeed won Reconstruction because despite the best efforts of the radicals in Congress power relationships in the South did not change while others said that the South lost because the war not only brought an end to slavery but also cost the South many of its men and much of its property. Back to the Top of the Course Narrative WEEK FIFTEEN Back to the Schedule of Classes, Week FifteenAt the end of Week Fourteen I asked the students to prepare questions for the final examination that they were to bring to class this week. These questions would form the basis of class discussion. My objective in making this assignment was to encourage the students to begin studying for the final assoon as possible. In addition, I wanted spend some time in class reinforcing the idea that history is not about memorizing facts but about making meaning. That many of the students had learned this lesson is apparent from the questions they wrote, many of which appear in Appendix D.Back to the Top of the Course Narrative VI. Final Comment for Fall 1996My syllabus for History 67 turned out to be an approximation rather than an exact blueprint for the course. It was a close approximation, but an approximation nonetheless because, as we went along, I made adjustments to both the material covered and the work assigned. For example, I did not cover every special topic mentioned on the syllabus; omissions resulted when the need to revisit some topics left insufficient time for others. In other words, no one example of freedom, diversity, or migration in early American history was as important to me as teaching the themes themselves. I also found that I needed to be flexible about my assessment plans, especially when it came to the weekly journals. By requiring the students to turn in written work regularly, the assessment scheme in this course gave the two instructors many different ways to evaluate each member of the class. This steady work load may have been too much for a few students. Two accepted lower final grades for their journals (and hence for the course) simply because they did not complete the assignment, while three stopped turning in journal entries after receiving C's or D's on the mid term exam (even though they continued attending class now and then before disappearing altogether), and because these three students did not withdraw, they ended up with F's in the course. By the date of the last regular class only five students had handed in all fourteen journal entries, and, as a result, I told the class that we would consider twelve submissions to have satisfied the journal requirement. However, only four students complained on their course evaluations about having to write for the class at least once per week. On the other hand, two said that they either found the journal to be helpful in mastering the material or worthwhile because it gave them many chances to improve their performance. Both the weekly journal entries and the Friday discussion sessions were intended to encourage students to keep up with their reading and to that end they were at least a partial success, but unfortunately there were always some who showed up on Friday unprepared to discuss the day's reading. Nevertheless, the Friday discussions were popular with the students. Several said on their course evaluations that they especially enjoyed the small group interaction of the Friday sessions.The final grade distribution in the course was five F's, five C's, fourteen B's, and four A's. Among the B's, there were six B-'s, four B's, and four B+s. This preponderance of B's is interesting and worth a comment. Perhaps the moderate size of the class accounts for this skewed distribution, but I think it resulted from giving the students many different ways to show what they could do. Those who excelled on exams generally did well in every aspect of the course. Four of the seven who received A's on the final exam received A's for the course. But there were many students who did better on some assignments than others. For example, seven received at least one grade at three different levels (A, B, C, or D). Four students achieved a B- or better in the course because they offset low grades on exams by doing well on their journals. Finally, the students took well to the structure that the three themes of the course provided. They used them in writing their journal entries and their book reports. For evidence of this, see Appendix D. However, the best indication that these themes helped them to organize their thinking is to be found in the final examination questions that they wrote many of which were built around one or more of these themes, and in their answers to Part II of the final examination (see Appendix E). |