Welcome and Introduction.
After going over the main themes and course requirements (see the Course Description and FAQ pages for more details) we will spend the bulk of the period in exercises designed to bring out some key lines of inquiry and debate for the course. We will use these issues to guide our discussion for the rest of the term.
Cycles of Crisis, Compromise, and the
Long Empty Time.
Note: please complete this and all subsequent assignments before class
on the assigned date.
Please post a short biographical introduction about yourself to the Electronic Course Workspace before today's class. In your posting you should tell something about your background and your interest in the Civil War era, as well as anything that might help distinguish you from other participants in the class.
Review the excerpt from David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature and the image of soldier's graves at Shiloh National Cemetery that we looked at in class yesterday.
Look over the Background Chronology, especially for pre-1854 events. You may optionally look through the Southern History Database produced by last Fall's HST-41 students, paying special attention to events between 1840 and 1860 that were NOT directly related to sectionalism and the coming of the Civil War.
Theories of Regional Difference.
Before class, please complete the short regional differences worksheet exercise using the UVA Census Data Browser.
The Impact of Slavery on Regional
Distinctiveness.
Read a short excerpt from George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South.
Read an excerpt from S.C. Senator James Henry Hammond's Mudsill
Speech of 4 March 1858. Read Francis Pickens' General Directions as to the Treatment of Negroes. Read an
excerpt from Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
responding to the Query on Manners. Read/listen to the slave narrative of Fountain Hughes. Read the summary account of the slave
narrative of Douglas
Dorsey. Read the account of Caroline Hammond's escape.
Antebellum Reforms, Moral Sentiments,
and Abolitionism.
Please read Vernon Burton, The Age of Lincoln, from the prologue through chapters one and two. Read the Encyclopedia Britannica biographies of William Wilberforce, David Walker, the Grimké sisters, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnet, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and James G. Birney.
[Main Schedule Page] [Week Two>>
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Note: The instructor reserves the right to change any provisions, due dates, grading percentages, or any other items without prior notice. All assignments on this schedule are covered under the university's policy on plagiarism and academic integrity. See the syllabus statement for further details. This page was last updated on 3/2/2008.