American Journey, The, Concise Edition, Volume 1

The American Journeyengages readers by tracing the individual and collective journeys of Americans. Offering a blend of political and social histories, the book shows that living up to American ideals is an ongoing voyage-one that has become increasingly more inclusive of different groups and ideas. With the goal of making American history accessible, the authors use a strong, chronologically-organized narrative, with an emphasis on regional balance, and provide readers with the tools they need to understand history. The concise edition concentrates on the journey of individuals and groups that shape America with a trade-like, full color narrative format.

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.  A native of Memphis, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and attended the University of Maryland.  He is the author or editor of thirteen books dealing with the history of the American South, including two works, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region (1982) and Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history, and both received the Mayflower Award for Non-Fiction.  Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History appeared in 2002 and received the Jules and Frances Landry Prize and was named by Choice as an Outstanding Non-fiction Book.  His most recent book is Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2003.  He is currently working on a re-interpretation of the Civil War, “Rebirth of a Nation: America during the Civil War Era,” for Holt Publishing Co.  The Organization of American Historians named him Distinguished Lecturer in 2001.  Goldfield is the editor of the Journal of Urban History and a co-author of The American Journey: A History of the United States (2005). He also serves as an expert witness in voting rights and death penalty cases, as a consultant on the urban South to museums and public television and radio, and serves with the U.S. State Department as an Academic Specialist, leading workshops on American history and culture in foreign countries.  He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Lincoln Prize.  Among his leisure-time activities are reading southern novels, listening to Gustav Mahler and Buddy Holly, and coaching girls’ fastpitch softball.

 

Carl Abbott is a professor of Urban Studies and planning at Portland State University. He taught previously in the history departments at the University of Denver and Old Dominion University, and held visiting appointments at Mesa College in Colorado and George Washington University. He holds degrees in history from Swarthmore College and the University of Chicago. He specializes in the history of cities and the American West and serves as co-editor of the Pacific Historical Review. His books include The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (1981, 1987), The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (1993), Planning a New West: The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (1997), and Political Terrain: Washington, D. C. from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (1999). He is currently working on a comprehensive history of the role of urbanization and urban culture in the history of western North America.

 

Virginia DeJohn Anderson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received her B.A. from the University of Connecticut. As the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship, she earned an M.A. degree at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Returning to the United States, she received her A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. She is the author of New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) and several articles on colonial history, which have appeared in such journals as the William and Mary Quarterly and the New England Quarterly. She is currently finishing a book entitled Creatures of Empire: People and Animals in Early America.

 

Jo Ann E. Argersinger received her Ph.D. from George Washington University and is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University. A recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is a historian of social, labor, and business policy. Her publications include Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression (1988) and Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry (1999).

 

Peter H. Argersinger received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University. He has won several fellowships as well as the Binkley-Stephenson Award from the Organization of American Historians. Among his books on American political and rural history are Populism and Politics (1974), Structure, Process, and Party (1992), and The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism (1995). His current research focuses on the political crisis of the 1890s.

 

William L. Barney is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A native of Pennsylvania, he received his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has published extensively on nineteenth century U.S. history and has a particular interest in the Old South and the coming of the Civil War. Among his publications are The Road to Secession (1972), The Secessionist Impulse (1974), Flawed Victory (1975), The Passage of the Republic (1987), and Battleground for the Union (1989). He is currently finishing an edited collection of essays on nineteenth-century America and a book on the Civil War. Most recently, he has edited A Companion to 19^th-Century America (2001) and finished The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Student Companion (2001).

 

Robert M. Weir is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He received his B.A. from Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. He has taught at the University of Houston and, as a visiting professor, at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. His articles have won prizes from the Southeastern Society for the Study of the Eighteenth Century and the William and Mary Quarterly. Among his publications are Colonial South Carolina: A History, "The Last of American Freemen": Studies in the Political Culture of the Colonial and Revolutionary South, and, most recently, a chapter on the Carolinas in the new Oxford History of the British Empire (1998).

Preface

About the Authors

 

Chapter 1 Worlds Apart 

Native American Societies before 1492

West African Societies

Western Europe on the Eve of Exploration

Contact

Competition for a Continent

 

Chapter 2 Transplantaion and Adaptation 1600-1685

The French in North America

The Dutch Overseas Empire

English Settlement in the Chesapeake

The Founding of New England

Competition in the Caribbean

The Restoration Colonies

 

Chapter 3 A Meeting of Cultures

Indians and Europeans

Africans and Europeans

European Laborers in Early America

 

Chapter 4 English Colonies in an Age of Empire 1660s-1763 

Economic Development and Imperial Trade in the British Colonies

The Transformation of Culture

The Colonial Political World

Expanding Empires

A Century of Warfare

 

Chapter 5 Imperial Breakdown 1763-1774

The Crisis of Imperial Authority

Republican Ideology and Colonial Protest

The Stamp Act Crisis

The Townshend Crisis

Domestic Divisions

The Final Imperial Crisis

 

Chapter 6 The War for Independence 1774-1783 

From Rebellion to War

The Continental Congress Becomes a National Government

The Combatants

The War in the North, 1776—1777

The War Widens, 1778—1781

The War and Society, 1775—1783

The American Victory, 1782—1783

 

Chapter 7 The First Republic 1776-1789 

The New Order of Republicanism

Problems at Home

Diplomatic Weaknesses

Toward a New Union

 

Chapter 8 A New Republic and the Rise of Parties 1789-1800  

Washington’s America

Forging a New Government

The Emergence of Parties

The Last Federalist Administration

 

Chapter 9 The Triumph and Collapse of Jeffersonian Republicanism 1800-1824 

 Jefferson’s Presidency

Madison and the Coming of War

The War of 1812

The Era of Good Feelings

The Breakdown of Unity

 

Chapter 10 The Jacksonian Era 1824- 1845

The Egalitarian Impulse

Jackson’s Presidency

Van Buren and Hard Times

The Rise of the Whig Party

The Whigs in Power

 

Chapter 11 Slavery and the Old South 1800-1860

The Lower South

The Upper South

Slave Life and Culture

Free Society

The Proslavery Argument

 

Chapter 12 The Market Revolution and Social Reform 1815-1850

Industrial Change and Urbanization

Reform and Moral Order

Institutions and Social Improvement

Abolitionism and Women’s Rights

 

Chapter 13 The Way West 1815-1850

The Agricultural Frontier

The Frontier of the Plains Indians

The Mexican Borderlands

Politics, Expansion, and War

 

Chapter 14 The Politics of Sectionalism 1846-1861

Slavery in the Territories

Political Realignment

The Road to Disunion

 

Chapter 15  Battle Cries and Freedom Songs The Civil War 1861-1865

Mobilization, North and South

The Early War, 1861—1862

Turning Points, 1862—1863

The War Transforms the North

The Confederacy Disintegrates

The Union Prevails, 1864—1865

 

Chapter 16 Reconstruction 1865-1877

White Southerners and the Ghosts of the Confederacy, 1865

More Than Freedom: African American Aspirations in 1865

Federal Reconstruction, 1865—1870

Counter-Reconstruction, 1870—1874

Redemption, 1874—1877

 

Appendix

Glossary

Credits

Index