Writing the American Past: US History to 1877

Timeline vii

Acknowledgments xi

Editor’s Introduction: History, Handed Down 1

1 Old World Explores New: 7

Settling and Securing Newfoundland in the Early 1600s

2 The Chesapeake: 13

Indenturing Labor, 1694

3 Life in Seventeenth-century New England: 19

Massachusetts in the 1690s

4 The Middle Colonies: 25

A Philadelphia Furrier, 1738

5 The Lower South and Slave Society: 33

Slave Resistance and Imperial Contests, 1739

6 Social Order in the Eighteenth-century South: 39

Slavery and Virginia’s Gentry in the 1720s

7 The Great Awakening: 45

A Letter to George Whitefield, 1746

8 Empire and Native Americans: 51

The Treaty of Lancaster, 1744

9 Imperial Crises and the Coming of Revolution: 57

The Politicization of a Colonial Merchant, 1765

10 Fighting the Revolutionary War: 65

AWoman on the Homefront, 1776

11 Crisis, Constitution, Nation: 71

Probate Data and the Problem of Becoming American in the 1780s

12 The New Republic: 77

A Massachusetts Federalist in 1800

13 Jeffersonian America: 83

On the Road in 1818

14 Revolutions in Time and Space: 89

Tourism and Travel, 1850

15 The Age of Jackson: 95

The View from Abroad in 1828

16 The Southern Master Class: 103

An Elite Woman’s School Experience, 1838

17 Lives of the Enslaved: 111

Urban Slavery in 1862

18 The Modernizing North: 119

A Businessman’s Letter, 1836

19 The Age of Reform: 125

On the Need for Temperance, 1824

20 Westward Expansion: 133

Kansas and Free Labor in 1856

21 The Coming of the Civil War: 141

Bleeding in Kansas, 1856

22 Secession: 149

A South Carolinian Describes the Event, 1860

23 Americans in Civil War: 155

A Canadian Soldier’s Experience, 1864

24 Emancipation: 161

The Labor of Freedom, 1867