HIST 127: American History to 1865
| Course Home Page | Blackboard | Instructor E-mail |
|---|---|---|
| Course Objectives | Instructor | Materials |
| History and the Internet | Assignments and Exams | Grading |
| Honor Code | Course Mechanics | Schedule |
Course Objectives
Greetings and welcome to HIST 127: American History to 1865!
In the past few years distance education classes such as this one have been taken by all sorts of people—those with doctorates, those with high school diplomas, stay-at-home parents, farmers, teachers, social workers, and prison inmates. Distance students have come from Illinois, Wyoming, Alaska, and Hawaii, as well as from North Carolina. Ultimately, then, you are part of a varied student body.
I am very familiar with the historical documents that we will read together for this course—almost too familiar—but the fresh insight I gain from sharing them with a diverse group of students each semester makes me appreciate them all over again. I look forward to looking at them anew through your comments, papers, and exams. Most of you, undoubtedly, studied American history in school long before taking this college course, but it is likely that reading about all those well-known events and people this time around will produce different emotions and you will draw different conclusions. Each of us will have different opinions based on our own diverse backgrounds and experiences, and sharing these in our class discussions will deepen our understandings of early American history and make the course more enjoyable for all.
I have attempted to structure this course to take advantage of our diversity and to indicate that history as a discipline is more than simply memorizing facts about the past. Certainly, memorizing when something happened, where it happened, and who did it is an important part of learning history, but history is also about selectively choosing from past events in order to tell a story. The narratives that historians construct about the past often reveal as much about the historians’ perspectives as they reveal about the past. In this course, we will explore a story about the past written by well respected historians, and we will work together to understand the story that they are trying to tell us. We will also construct our own narratives about the past.
I have selected the readings for this course with three goals in mind. First, we will learn about America’s past before 1865 as told by some of the most respected historians in the field. Second, we will learn how to appropriately question the arguments made by those historians. Third, we will learn how to construct our own historical arguments. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People will help us achieve the first goal. In addition, I have supplemented the readings from the textbook with several academic articles that are available online. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection will help us to achieve the second and third goals. We will employ what we learn in After the Fact to interpret and write about the primary documents that I have assigned (a primary document is anything written by someone who lived in the period being studied). It is my hope that you will learn not only about the current narrative of the past as provided by contemporary historians, but also become an historian yourself.
Instructor
J Mark Leslie, MA
Department of History
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I am a graduate student working toward the doctorate in the Department of History at UNC-Chapel Hill. I am an historian of America’s colonial period, and my current research focuses on religious cultures in North Carolina between the colonial and antebellum periods, in particular, North Carolina’s Quaker communities and the significance of their decline in the nineteenth century.
You can contact me via e-mail. There is a link to my e-mail address at the top of every course page (in the gray table header). I will also be “present” in our discussion forums, and if you have a question about the material, others are sure to be interested, so please post it there.
Materials
The required texts for this course are:
- Murrin, John M., Johnson, Paul E. et al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Vol. 1, 5th edition (2008)
- Davidson, James West, and Lytle, Mark Hamilton. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, Vol. 1, 5th edition (2005).
I will also assign reading materials (articles and primary documents) that are available on the Internet.
This course is divided into fourteen lessons. Most often, you will be required to read roughly sixty pages of text each week. As you read through the Liberty, Equality, Power, pay attention to the large themes you encounter—chapter headings and subheadings are a good place to start. Paying attention to the way that the textbook is structured will help you understand the major trends the authors want you to learn, and will help you do well on the exams for this course.
History and the Internet
The Internet has become an incredible resource for historians over the past few years. Many journals no longer publish hard editions; instead, they publish their journals on the Internet. This has cut down on the costs of producing journals, and some are even free. Similarly, many important older books and documents have entered the public domain (are no longer covered by copyright), and have been scanned and posted online, making them merely a Google search away.
The value of the Internet is especially evident for historians of early America, and the UNC-Chapel Hill library subscribes to several online databases that make historical work in early America easier than ever before. Every book published in the United States before 1819, for example, is available on Early American Imprints. UNC also subscribes to several databases that contain most of the newspapers published in Britain’s North American colonies and in the young United States. Of particular importance for this course are articles available through the UNC Library’s subscription to JSTOR. We will draw upon this database several times in the course to supplement the readings from our textbooks, and where assigned, I will provide you with a direct link.
Assignments and Exams
Class Discussion
Our online class discussion will take place on Blackboard. Each lesson will have its own discussion forum. Students will sometimes be assigned to serve as conversation leaders. I will be more specific about the discussion forum as the course progresses. Please note, however, that participation in the forum on a weekly basis is a required part of the course.
Written Assignments
During the semester, you will be required to complete two five- to seven-page essays (2,000 to 2,800 words). As you complete these essays, please keep the following points in mind:
- Write your responses in proper essay form. That is, you must have an introduction containing a thesis statement (which summarizes the main points of the essay), a body that follows the outline stated in the introduction, and, finally, a summarizing conclusion. You may want to consult the Writing Center Handouts for tips on writing a good essay, and there is even more specific help in the Writing for Specific Fields: History handout.
- The general argument(s) in each essay should be your own—your thoughts and your words. You should, however, support your arguments with course materials. For instance, perhaps you might choose to argue that the Civil War was the result of poor decision-making on the part of US policy-makers (your idea). You might then refer to specific actions taken by those policy-makers (support from course materials).
- When supporting your arguments with factual detail, try to explain the facts in your own words. If you paraphrase or quote from your readings, be sure to use quotation marks and cite your references. I do not care what style of citation you use, but you must cite your sources. I need to know the name of the cited source, who wrote it, and the page number(s). See Citing Information for a tutorial and links to more resources.
Send papers as e-mail attachments to my e-mail address. Microsoft Word (.doc) files are preferred. If you are unsure what format to save an attached file in, please contact me before sending in your assignment.
Exams
This course has a midterm and a final. The midterm exam will cover all material in the course up to and including Lesson 7. The final exam is comprehensive. Each exam will include several short answer/identification questions and one essay question. I will make the questions available on Blackboard on their scheduled dates, and give you a few days to write your responses. You must send me your Microsoft Word document (preferred) via e-mail by the due date. See the Schedule for the exam dates.
Grading
Your final grade will be determined by the following:
| Discussion forum participation | 20 percent |
| Paper 1 | 15 percent |
| Paper 2 | 15 percent |
| Midterm exam | 20 percent |
| Final exam | 30 percent |
Honor Code
Remember that as a student of UNC-Chapel Hill, you are bound by the University's Honor Code. If you are not familiar with the University’s honor code, please read it and make sure you understand it, particularly the policies on plagiarism. Ninety percent of the cases brought to Honor Court involve plagiarism. To make sure you understand how to avoid plagiarism, read the plagiarism handout from the UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center.
Course Mechanics
Blackboard
Your discussion forums and links to your exams are accessed through a software package called Blackboard, and you will need to login to Blackboard using a unique identifier known as your UNC Onyen (Only Name You'll Ever Need) and Onyen password.
If you do not already have a UNC Onyen, go to the Onyen Web site and follow the instructions for creating an Onyen. If you have an Onyen but have forgotten it (or the password), you will find help on the Onyen Web site.
Use your Onyen to login to Blackboard, then click on the “HIST 127 CCO” link. You will see navigation buttons on the left taking you to the Discussion Forums and so on.
If you experience problems accessing Blackboard, this is what you should do:
- If you do not already have a UNC Onyen, go to the Onyen Web site and follow the instructions for creating an Onyen.
- If you have an Onyen but have forgotten it (or the password), go to the Onyen Web site.
- If you have your Onyen but can't log in to Blackboard, contact Janice Durham at the Friday Center.
- If you can log in to Blackboard but can't find this course listed, contact Janice Durham at the Friday Center.
- If you can't locate a forum in Blackboard, contact the Instructional Designer at the Friday Center.
If you have other technical problems while using Blackboard, contact Blackboard Help (use the Help button in Blackboard, or call 919-962-HELP). Assistance is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Online Library Resources
Students enrolled in Carolina Courses Online can access online library resources from the UNC Library System by linking to Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works as well as accessing e-reserves. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources. If you encounter difficulties, please report your problem by visiting this Web page for reporting a problem.
All communication from your instructor will go to your UNC Onyen e-mail address (the one that appears when you post to the discussion forum). Off-campus users can access their UNC e-mail using UNC Webmail. You can have your e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking “Forward e-mail” at the Onyen Web site.
We strongly recommend that you use your UNC e-mail account for all e-mails regarding your course. Hotmail users should be aware that Hotmail will block messages sent from within Blackboard because Blackboard uses “blind carbon copy” to protect privacy. If you forward your mail to a commercial e-mail service provider (yahoo.com or msn.com, for example), messages from your instructor, Friday Center staff, or other students may be delayed because these service providers sometimes place temporary blocks on messages originating from universities. If you are using webmail, the e-mail links in this course may not work for you.
It is extremely important for you to save copies of any work you send to your instructor via e-mail. If your instructor doesn't receive your work, you must have a duplicate copy, indicating the date sent, to prove that you submitted the assignment on time. It is your responsibility to maintain copies of your sent e-mails, as there is no way to guarantee that any e-mail message will be delivered. Please check your e-mail software to see how it manages sent and saved messages. Some software automatically deletes messages one month after they have been sent; others only save messages if they are filed in folders; others save messages received but not those sent. You may need to send yourself a copy of your e-mailed assignment at the same time you send it to your instructor, or you may need to print a copy of the e-mail message and any attachments to keep in your paper files. No matter how your system works, make sure you know how to save a copy of all work that you submit to your instructor and that you save the copy for several months beyond the end of the course.
Other Questions
Contact your instructor with questions regarding the content of the course and your progress. There is an e-mail link to your instructor at the top of every lesson page. Please include “HIST 127 CCO” in the subject line of your e-mail.
Contact the instructional designer at the Friday Center about problems with this Web site, including bad links.
If you have any logistical questions as you work through the course (enrollment, Onyen, credits, withdrawal, and so on), contact the Student Services staff at the Friday Center (phone 919-962-1134 or 800-862-5669).
Lessons
| Lesson 1 | Initial Contact: Catastrophe and Spanish Conquest |
| Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday | |
| Lesson 2 | Challenges to Spain’s Dominance in the Western Hemisphere |
| Lesson 3 | The Boom and Bust of Tobacco: Life in the Chesapeake During the Seventeenth Century |
| Lesson 4 | The Holy Experiment: Puritan New England and the Beginnings of Declension |
| Lesson 5 | The Anglicized Empire: Imperial Conflicts, Immigration, and Closer Cultural Connections with London |
| Lesson 6 | The Imperial Crisis: Challenges to Britain’s Imperial Control in North America and the War for American Independence |
| Lesson 7 | Stagnation, Revitalization, and a Crisis of Authority within Spain’s North American Empire |
| Lesson 8 | What Kind of Nation? The Struggle to Create the Constitution and the Struggle Over the Meaning of the Constitution for the Nation |
| Spring Break | |
| Lesson 9 | The Transportation Revolution in the American North |
| Lesson 10 | The Old South: Cotton and Slavery |
| Lesson 11 | The Development of the Second Party System and the Growth of Sectional Divisions |
| Lesson 12 | Manifest Destiny?: Western Expansion and the War with Mexico |
| Lesson 13 | “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”: The Collapse of the Second Party System and the Birth of the Republican Party |
| Lesson 14 | The American Civil War |