America Firsthand, Volume I Readings from Settlement to Reconstruction

by Marcus, Robert D.; Burner, David; Marcus, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780312489069
• ISBN10: 0312489064
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-27
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

With its distinctive focus on ordinary people, this primary documents reader offers a remarkable range of perspectives on America's history from those who lived it from Jews in the Early Republic to strikers at an auto plant in 1940s Detroit, and from a Civil War battlefield nurse to a 1990s dot.com entrepreneur. Popular Points of View sections expose students to different perspectives on a specific event or topic, and Visual Portfolios invite analysis of the visual record. These features and the collection as a whole save instructors time finding consistently suitable source material on their own.

Author Biography

ROBERT D. MARCUS, late of the State University of New York College at Brockport, wrote on late-nineteenth-century American politics as well as on the United States in the 1960s. He developed materials for collaborative learning techniques and edited several dozen books for Brandywine Press.

DAVID BURNER, professor emeritus of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written two books on John F. Kennedy as well as books on Herbert Hoover, the 1960s, and the Democratic Party in the 1920s, including a number of textbooks. Burner has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and is now completing a detailed history of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ANTHONY MARCUS is an Associate Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. He has taught American History, Anthropology, and International Development Studies on three continents and founded Australia's only entirely online Internet PhD program. His published works include numerous articles and books on history, African-American life, global development and culture. His most recent book, Where Have All The Homeless Gone? The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis is about the impact of the Reagan Revolution on life and social policy in the urban United States.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction: Using Sources to Study the Past	p. xi
Indians and Europeans: New World Encounters	p. 1
Points of View: Contact and Conquest (1502-1521)
Dispatches of the Conquest from the New World	p. 3
A Nahua Account of the Conquest of Mexico	p. 7
For Critical Thinking	p. 12
Destruction of the Indies	p. 13
Description of Virginia	p. 18
Encounter With the Indians Father	p. 22
Captured by Indians	p. 28
Visual Portfolio: New World Images	p. 37
The Colonial Experience: A Rapidly Changing Society	p. 43
Points of View: Women in Colonial America
A Business Trip Across the Colonies	p. 45
Leaving an Abusive Husband	p. 50
For Critical Thinking	p. 57
Testimony of Pueblo Indians	p. 58
The African Slave Trade	p. 64
On the Misfortune of Indentured Servants	p. 69
Defending Colonial Activities Before Parliament	p. 73
Assimilation and Discrimination Jews in the Early Republic	p. 80
Mapmaking and Colonialism in the New World Amplissima Regionis Mississippi	p. 86
Resistance and Revolution: Struggling for Liberty	p. 89
Points of View: The Boston Massacre (1770)
A British Officer's Description	p. 90
Colonial Accounts George Robert Twelves Hewes, John Tudor, and the	p. 94
For Critical Thinking	p. 102
Visual Portfolio: Patriot and Loyalist Propaganda	p. 103
A Soldier's View of the Revolutionary War	p. 110
Choosing Sides	p. 117
Secret Correspondence of a Loyalist Wife	p. 122
Republican Motherhood	p. 127
Shays's Rebellion: Prelude to the Constitution	p. 132
Casting Their Lot With the British	p. 138
Defining America: The Expanding Nation	p. 145
Points of View: Religion in the New Nation (1800-1830)
The Great Revival of 1800	p. 147
An American Deist	p. 132
Religion in America	p. 157
For Critical Thinking	p. 162
Crossing the Continent	p. 163
The Trail of Tears	p. 171
Pulling a Handcart to the Mormon Zion	p. 177
How the West Was Won An Officer of the "Army of the West"	p. 184
Life in California Before the Gold Discovery	p. 189
Miners During the California Gold Rush Daguerreotype	p. 197
An Age of Reform: Rearranging Social Patterns	p. 199
Points of View: Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
A Slave Insurrection	p. 200
Who is to Blame?	p. 207
For Critical Thinking	p. 214
The Lowell Textile Workers	p. 215
A Family Torn Apart by Slavery	p. 222
Life of a Female Slave	p. 228
A Pioneer for Women's Rights	p. 236
Taking Up Arms Against Slavery	p. 244
Visual Portfolio: Slavery and Freedom	p. 251
Civil War and Reconstruction: The Price of War	p. 261
Points of View: Winding Down the War and an Uncertain Future
What the Black Man Wants	p. 263
A Slave Owner's Journal at the End of the Civil War	p. 269
For Critical Thinking	p. 276
Three Days of Terror	p. 277
The Battle of Gettysburg: at War and at Home	p. 286
Fighting for the Union Letters from Black Union Soldiers	p. 295
Healing Wounds	p. 302
African Americans During Reconstruction	p. 309
White Southerners' Reactions to Reconstruction	p. 314
Ruins in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865 Or 1866 Photography	p. 321
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