This course will introduce the student to United States history from the colonial period to the Civil War. The student will learn about the major political, economic, and social changes that took place in America during this 250-year period. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: Analyze the first encounters between the Native inhabitants of North America with Spanish, French, and English colonizers and determine the effect of European colonization on Native Americans; Describe and assess the creation of English/British America; Interpret the main social, political, and economic development of colonies in British North America, including the emergence of a slave economy; Analyze how and why an independent United States was created in 1776 by interpreting the ideological, political, and economic roots of American independence as it developed through the Seven YearsŐ War, the Imperial Crisis and the American Revolution; Analyze the myriad political and economic crises that plagued the Early American Republic in the 1780s and 1790s and identify and describe the expansion of slavery, partisan politics, economic innovation, westward expansion, and the outbreak of the War of 1812; Interpret the main developments of the Age of Jackson, the Indian Removal Act, the Nullification Crisis, the rise of the Whig Party, the Bank War; Interrogate the definition of 'democracy' in 1820s and 1830s America; Analyze the era of reform in antebellum America and identify and describe the emergence of new religious groups- Shakers, Mormons, evangelicals - as well as moral reformers who sought to curb alcoholism, improve the prison system, increase women's rights, end slavery, or modify the American education system; Analyze antebellum America and the emergence of sectionalism, and identify and describe how Northerners and Southerners apparently opposing viewpoints about labor systems, political economy, and race often obscured many similarities; Analyze the impact of the ideology of Manifest Destiny on the development of the American West as it affected Native Americans and white settlers; Identify and describe the West, the California Gold Rush, the Mexican War, and the contested boundary in the Pacific Northwest; Interpret how the question of slaveryŐs expansion affected American political parties, law, and created sectional conflict - both political and ideological - between 1820 and the 1850s; Analyze the American Civil War; identify and describe how and why the federal union that was created in 1776 collapsed in 1861; and assess the major facets of the war (including military engagements, the home fronts, Lincoln's presidency, and the question of slavery). (History 211)
