https://youtu.be/MAUhEML8rjU
Welcome to US History and Primary Source Anthology, volume 1! This is a textbook for US History I, Pre-colonial through Reconstruction. Unlike most textbooks, which are mostly made up of narratives written by historians, based upon what we think is important in the American past, this book relies much more on the words, ideas, and stories of the people of the time. This is not to say that I think historians like me have nothing valuable to say about the ways things happened, how some events caused or influenced others, or what themes and lessons we can take from the past and apply to America’s present and choices about its future. I’m still narrating an overview at the beginning of each chapter, and I’m choosing these particular primary sources from the nearly infinite number available, because I think they fit together in an interesting way and shed light on what people were thinking in our nation’s past.
The point, I think, is that when we look at our history, we should be aware not only of what interests us today, but what the people in that history thought was meaningful and important. In some cases, their interests and our own will align. Sometimes, however, we may find that people in the past had other things on their minds or understood events they were participating in or living through in different ways.
The simplest example of this, of course, is where there was a conflict or disagreement. We might learn something new, if we understood both sides. What enslaved people thought of their situation in light of the revolution’s focus on freedom, for example. Or how Native Americans or Mexicans responded to Manifest Destiny. These are obvious instances when it can be helpful to hear from both sides, rather than only the victors who typically write the histories. And even in the case when someone (a politician, a cultural critic, a historian) claims to speak for the people, it can be useful to check those claims against the things the people themselves have said or written. It can also be helpful to read sources that may not have been intended for the public, to see if there is more to a story than is recorded in official documents.
This textbook will be organized in fifteen chapters, to make it easy to use in a typical semester-long history course. The chapters will be chronological, beginning before European colonization and ending with Reconstruction after the Civil War. I’ll begin each chapter with an overview that describes the main events and the themes that I, as a historian, think are most important for students to understand about the era covered. This will be followed by ten to twenty primary source readings that expand on or illustrate or in some cases “complicate” the basic narrative. The readings are each framed with short passages describing the author and explaining when and where the events discussed happened, to provide some context. After the readings, you will find some questions that encourage you to think critically about what you have read, in light of the other readings and the historical events covered in the introductory narrative. These contextualizations and questions will be contributed by me and by my students in US History I, who are using this textbook as I am writing it. They are some of the questions you might want to consider, but not necessarily all of them. You should feel free to interpret the readings based on your own knowledge, experience and interests.
As I just mentioned, the framing descriptions and discussion prompts are by me and by my students. One of the most interesting and exciting elements of this textbook, in my opinion, is that it is a collaboration between a professor and undergraduate students. In a survey class. Not a collaboration of professional historians. Not graduate students. Not even history majors. Undergrads in a US History I survey; many of them first- and second-year students taking the class to fulfill a “Core Requirement” at the university.
One of my main interests, as a historian, is talking about history with regular people. Although it’s fun, sometimes, comparing notes and arguing over interpretations with other experts, talking about history with people outside the discipline can be even more fun — and I think is even more important. History helps us understand how we got to the present moment. It describes the choices people made in the past and what influenced, motivated, and constrained those choices. Americans today are faced with many important choices. It would be very helpful to understand how and why people have made the choices that led us to today, as we make the choices that will lead to tomorrow.
