American Conversations
From Colonization through Reconstruction, Volume 1
Published on 22. November 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-0-13-244683-9 (ISBN)
Description
Presents primary source readings in American history to help students identify with the nation's past.
American Conversations is a two-volume anthology of original primary sources in United States history. It features texts by famous and obscure Americans, seeking to reflect the voices of Native Americans, African Americans, women, and workers out of the backwaters onto the historical mainstream by devoting attention to these "forgotten" Americans. At the same time, the text acquaints students with leading figures and core texts. This juxtaposition offers a richer understanding of American history.
The people and texts presented will resonate powerfully with the contemporary American conversation. Whatever today's topic-race relations, the battle of the sexes, protest or piety, or unum vs. pluribus-readers will find its roots in these pages.
A better teaching and learning experience
This program will provide a better teaching and learning experience-for you and your students. Here's how:
Personalize Learning- MySearchLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals.
Improve Critical Thinking- Suggested answers and discussion topics are provided in the appendix.
Engage Students- Images are used as an indispensable tool for illuminating the past. To sharpen the reader's eye, American Conversations includes three chapters devoted exclusively to visual texts. Additionally, substantive head notes accompany the longer passages.
Support Instructors- MySearchLaband Class Preparation are available.
For volume 2 of this text, search ISBN-10: 0131582615
Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab, please visit: www.mysearchlab.com or you can purchase a ValuePack of the text + MySearchLab (at no additional cost): ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205721648 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205721641.
American Conversations is a two-volume anthology of original primary sources in United States history. It features texts by famous and obscure Americans, seeking to reflect the voices of Native Americans, African Americans, women, and workers out of the backwaters onto the historical mainstream by devoting attention to these "forgotten" Americans. At the same time, the text acquaints students with leading figures and core texts. This juxtaposition offers a richer understanding of American history.
The people and texts presented will resonate powerfully with the contemporary American conversation. Whatever today's topic-race relations, the battle of the sexes, protest or piety, or unum vs. pluribus-readers will find its roots in these pages.
A better teaching and learning experience
This program will provide a better teaching and learning experience-for you and your students. Here's how:
Personalize Learning- MySearchLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals.
Improve Critical Thinking- Suggested answers and discussion topics are provided in the appendix.
Engage Students- Images are used as an indispensable tool for illuminating the past. To sharpen the reader's eye, American Conversations includes three chapters devoted exclusively to visual texts. Additionally, substantive head notes accompany the longer passages.
Support Instructors- MySearchLaband Class Preparation are available.
For volume 2 of this text, search ISBN-10: 0131582615
Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab, please visit: www.mysearchlab.com or you can purchase a ValuePack of the text + MySearchLab (at no additional cost): ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205721648 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205721641.
Reviews / Votes
"The 3 greatest strengths of the book are: 1) the variety of topics and selections included, 2) the inclusion of both best-sellers and little-known publications, 3) the introductions are generally thoughtful and well-written."-Carol Sue Humphrey, Oklahoma Baptist University
"I am thoroughly impressed with the narrative from start to finish. The author sets a very high bar with the first chapter and he continues through the last...It emphasizes depth over breadth, it contains documents rarely used in similar readers, and the chapter introductions contextual the documents better than most others."
-Jeffrey G. Strickland, Montclair State University
"The biographical information about each source is thorough and the use of recent secondary literature is very good."
-Rebecca Hill, Borough of Manhattan Community College
"The book has strong analysis of the documents and loads of information about the writers and various topics...Most of the chapters contain penetrating questions weaved into the analysis of each introduction. The questions will help the students with the readings. The author has provided analysis that will help the students on their way to answering the questions, but not gone so far as to give the reader the answers in the intros."
-Robert O'Brien, Lonestar College-CyFair
"The greatest strengths of this work are the use of longer excerpts from fewer texts...the vivid, informed and engaging introductory essays, and the constant "cross-fertilization" and layering of the sources. I love the way the editor models historical analysis. He provides the necessary contexts for understanding these documents as well as a very helpful and current bibliography. I don't see how students could complain about already knowing the subject matter when they are challenged to think so differently about the practice of history."
-Linda K. Salvucci, Trinity University
More details
Persons
James Merrell, editor of Volume 1 of American Conversations, is the Lucy Maynard Salmon Professor of History at Vassar College. He has been studying history for forty years, writing and publishing it for thirty, and teaching it for more than twenty-five -mostly at Vassar, with brief stints at Northwestern University and the College of William and Mary. Though he has taught everything from Machiavelli and Luther to McCarthy and LBJ, his main area of interest is American history from the opening of European colonization to the close of Reconstruction some three centuries later. Born and raised in Minnesota, Professor Merrell earned bachelor's degrees at Lawrence University and Oxford University before receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to arriving at Vassar in 1984, he was a Fellow at the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian (now the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies) at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and at the Institute of Early American History and Culture (now the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture) in Williamsburg, Virginia. He has also received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Merrell's research interests are in early American history in general and relations between Natives and newcomers in particular. Co-editor of three volumes (two anthologies by Routledge and one by Syracuse University Press) and author of numerous articles, his first book, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (University of North Carolina Press, 1989; twentieth-anniversary edition, 2009), won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians as well as the Bancroft Prize. His second book, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (W.W. Norton, 1999), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won Professor Merrell his second Bancroft Prize, making him one among the handful of historians ever to win that prestigious award twice.
Jerald Podair, coeditor of Volume 2 of American Conversations, is Professor of History and the Robert S. French Professor of American Studies at Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin. A native of New York City and a former practicing attorney, he received his B.A. from New York University, a J.D. degree from Columbia University Law School, and a Ph.D. in American history from Princeton University. His research interests lie in the areas of American urban history and racial and ethnic relations. He is the author of The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, published by Yale University Press, which was a finalist for the Organization of American Historians' Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book on the struggle for civil rights in the United States, and an honorable mention for the Urban History Association's Book Award in North American urban history. Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer, his biography of the civil rights and labor leader, was published in 2009 by Rowman & Littlefield. His most recent book is a co-edited volume entitled The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction, published in 2011 by the University of Virginia Press. His articles and reviews have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of American History, The Journal of Urban History, Reviews in American History, Radical History Review, Labor History, and American Studies. He contributed an essay, " 'One City, One Standard': The Struggle for Equality in Rudolph Giuliani's New York," to Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era, edited by Clarence Taylor, published by Fordham University Press in 2011. At Lawrence University, he teaches courses on a variety of topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history, including the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Great Depression and New Deal, the 1960s, and the Civil Rights Movement. He also teaches Lawrence's first course in American Studies, which he introduced in 2007. He is the recipient of the Allan Nevins Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians for "literary distinction in the writing of history," and a Fellow of the New York Academy of History. He was appointed by Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle to the state's Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, on which he served from 2008 to 2009. In 2010, he was honored by Lawrence University with its Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and in 2012 with its Faculty Convocation Award.
Andrew Kersten, coeditor of Volume 2 of American Conversations, is Frankenthal Professor of History in the Department of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He teaches courses in U.S. history-the U.S. history survey, U.S. immigration history, and U.S. labor history-and interdisciplinary courses relating to his department. He researches and writes about American history since Reconstruction. His books include Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-46 (University of Illinois Press, 2000), which is an investigation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practice Committee; Labor's Home Front: The AFL during World War II (New York University Press, 2006), which is a history of the American Federation of Labor during the war; A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); and Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011). Currently, he is working on an online digital database of A. Philip Randolph's writings, as well as an anthology of new historical interpretations about Randolph's life and legacy. He has two other professional passions. Kersten frequently collaborates with public historians and museums such as the National Railroad Museum and the Experimental Aircraft Association's Museum. He also enjoys working with K-12 history teachers. From 2003 to 2006, he led a Teaching American History Grant Program of his own design that offered intensive professional development for history teachers, and he continues to collaborate on curricular design and other educational issues.
Jerald Podair, coeditor of Volume 2 of American Conversations, is Professor of History and the Robert S. French Professor of American Studies at Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin. A native of New York City and a former practicing attorney, he received his B.A. from New York University, a J.D. degree from Columbia University Law School, and a Ph.D. in American history from Princeton University. His research interests lie in the areas of American urban history and racial and ethnic relations. He is the author of The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, published by Yale University Press, which was a finalist for the Organization of American Historians' Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book on the struggle for civil rights in the United States, and an honorable mention for the Urban History Association's Book Award in North American urban history. Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer, his biography of the civil rights and labor leader, was published in 2009 by Rowman & Littlefield. His most recent book is a co-edited volume entitled The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction, published in 2011 by the University of Virginia Press. His articles and reviews have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of American History, The Journal of Urban History, Reviews in American History, Radical History Review, Labor History, and American Studies. He contributed an essay, " 'One City, One Standard': The Struggle for Equality in Rudolph Giuliani's New York," to Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era, edited by Clarence Taylor, published by Fordham University Press in 2011. At Lawrence University, he teaches courses on a variety of topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history, including the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Great Depression and New Deal, the 1960s, and the Civil Rights Movement. He also teaches Lawrence's first course in American Studies, which he introduced in 2007. He is the recipient of the Allan Nevins Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians for "literary distinction in the writing of history," and a Fellow of the New York Academy of History. He was appointed by Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle to the state's Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, on which he served from 2008 to 2009. In 2010, he was honored by Lawrence University with its Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and in 2012 with its Faculty Convocation Award.
Andrew Kersten, coeditor of Volume 2 of American Conversations, is Frankenthal Professor of History in the Department of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He teaches courses in U.S. history-the U.S. history survey, U.S. immigration history, and U.S. labor history-and interdisciplinary courses relating to his department. He researches and writes about American history since Reconstruction. His books include Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-46 (University of Illinois Press, 2000), which is an investigation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practice Committee; Labor's Home Front: The AFL during World War II (New York University Press, 2006), which is a history of the American Federation of Labor during the war; A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); and Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011). Currently, he is working on an online digital database of A. Philip Randolph's writings, as well as an anthology of new historical interpretations about Randolph's life and legacy. He has two other professional passions. Kersten frequently collaborates with public historians and museums such as the National Railroad Museum and the Experimental Aircraft Association's Museum. He also enjoys working with K-12 history teachers. From 2003 to 2006, he led a Teaching American History Grant Program of his own design that offered intensive professional development for history teachers, and he continues to collaborate on curricular design and other educational issues.
Content
Found in this Section:
1. Brief Table of Contents
2. Full Table of Contents
1. BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Introduction
Chapter 1: "In the beginning"
Chapter 2: "I walked lost and naked through many and very strange lands..." Chapter 3: "The True Pictures of those People"
Chapter 4: "Come, go along with us"
Chapter 5: "These infant countrys of America"
Chapter 6: "A young man of promising parts"
Chapter 7: "The last cord now is broken"
Chapter 8:"Constitutions Employ Every Pen"
Chapter 9:"Great men get great praise, little men, nothing"
Chapter 10: "I can't tell a lie, Pa"
Chapter 11: "The general equality of condition among the people"
Chapter 12: "The thoroughly American branch of painting"
Chapter 13: "Let every man of color wrap himself in mourning, for the 22nd of December and the 4th of July are days of mourning and not of joy"
Chapter 14: "We Abolition women are turning the world upside down"
Chapter 15: "A series of unfortunate incidents"
Chapter 16: "I felt a degree of freedom"
Chapter 17: "Negro slaves are the happiest people in the world"
Chapter 18: "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in"
Chapter 19: "Photographic presentments will be accepted by posterity with an undoubting faith"
Chapter 20: "The terrorism was so great"
Afterword
Further Readings
2. FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Introduction
Chapter 1: "In the beginning"
Africans, Americans, and Europeans Imagine their Origins
The World on the Turtle's Back (Iroquois Story)
The First Booke of Moses, called Genesis (1611)
The Revolt against God: A Fang Story (Gabon, West Africa)
Chapter 2: "I walked lost and naked through many and very strange lands..."
Cabeza de Vaca Survives America
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca (1542)
Chapter 3: "The True Pictures of those People"
John White and Theodor de Bry Eye the Indians
The Watercolors of John White (1590)
Engravings of Theodor de Bry (1590)
Chapter 4: "Come, go along with us"
Mrs. Rowlandson Endures Travels and Travails
A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
Chapter 5: "These infant countrys of America"
Dr. Hamilton Reports on His Summer Vacation
The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1744)
Chapter 6: "A young man of promising parts"
Benjamin Franklin Composes His Life
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1818)
Chapter 7: "The last cord now is broken"
Colonists Declare Independence
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Declaration of Independence (1776)
Chapter 8:"Constitutions Employ Every Pen"
Rebels Make Up New States
The Constitution of Virginia (1776)
Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776)
Constitution of Maryland (1776)
Chapter 9:"Great men get great praise, little men, nothing"
Private Martin Tells War Stories
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin (1830)
Chapter 10: "I can't tell a lie, Pa"
Parson Weems Invents George Washington
The Life of George Washington; with Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen (1809)
Chapter 11: "The general equality of condition among the people"
Monsieur Tocqueville Visits America
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1863)
Chapter 12: "The thoroughly American branch of painting"
Cole and Company Paint Nature's Nation
Paintings of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, William Bartlett, Asher Durand, and
Albert Bierstadt
Chapter 13: "Let every man of color wrap himself in mourning, for the 22nd of December and the 4th of July are days of mourning and not of joy"
Rev. Apess Rewrites American History
William Apess, A Son of the Forest (1831)
William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip (1836)
Chapter 14: "We Abolition women are turning the world upside down"
The Grimke Sisters Upset America
Angelina Grimke,An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free
States Issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (1836)
Sarah M. Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (1837)
Chapter 15: "A series of unfortunate incidents"
Jose Enrique de la Pena Remembers the Alamo
Jose Enrique De la Pena, With Santa Anna in Texas (1836)
Chapter 16: "I felt a degree of freedom"
Frederick Douglass Constructs a Life
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)
Chapter 17: "Negro slaves are the happiest people in the world"
George Fitzhugh Defends Slavery
George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South and Cannibals All! (1854)
George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters (1857)
Chapter 18: "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in"
President Lincoln Articulates America
Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Speech at Springfield, Illinois (1857)
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois (1858)
Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois (1858)
First Inaugural Address (1861)
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg (1863)
Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Chapter 19: "Photographic presentments will be accepted by posterity with an undoubting faith"
Cameramen and Other Artists Picture Gettysburg
Photographs and Illustrations of Gettysburg (1860s)
Chapter 20: "The terrorism was so great"
Congressmen Investigate the Ku Klux Klan
Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States (1871)
Afterword
Further Readings
1. Brief Table of Contents
2. Full Table of Contents
1. BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Introduction
Chapter 1: "In the beginning"
Chapter 2: "I walked lost and naked through many and very strange lands..." Chapter 3: "The True Pictures of those People"
Chapter 4: "Come, go along with us"
Chapter 5: "These infant countrys of America"
Chapter 6: "A young man of promising parts"
Chapter 7: "The last cord now is broken"
Chapter 8:"Constitutions Employ Every Pen"
Chapter 9:"Great men get great praise, little men, nothing"
Chapter 10: "I can't tell a lie, Pa"
Chapter 11: "The general equality of condition among the people"
Chapter 12: "The thoroughly American branch of painting"
Chapter 13: "Let every man of color wrap himself in mourning, for the 22nd of December and the 4th of July are days of mourning and not of joy"
Chapter 14: "We Abolition women are turning the world upside down"
Chapter 15: "A series of unfortunate incidents"
Chapter 16: "I felt a degree of freedom"
Chapter 17: "Negro slaves are the happiest people in the world"
Chapter 18: "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in"
Chapter 19: "Photographic presentments will be accepted by posterity with an undoubting faith"
Chapter 20: "The terrorism was so great"
Afterword
Further Readings
2. FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Introduction
Chapter 1: "In the beginning"
Africans, Americans, and Europeans Imagine their Origins
The World on the Turtle's Back (Iroquois Story)
The First Booke of Moses, called Genesis (1611)
The Revolt against God: A Fang Story (Gabon, West Africa)
Chapter 2: "I walked lost and naked through many and very strange lands..."
Cabeza de Vaca Survives America
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca (1542)
Chapter 3: "The True Pictures of those People"
John White and Theodor de Bry Eye the Indians
The Watercolors of John White (1590)
Engravings of Theodor de Bry (1590)
Chapter 4: "Come, go along with us"
Mrs. Rowlandson Endures Travels and Travails
A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
Chapter 5: "These infant countrys of America"
Dr. Hamilton Reports on His Summer Vacation
The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1744)
Chapter 6: "A young man of promising parts"
Benjamin Franklin Composes His Life
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1818)
Chapter 7: "The last cord now is broken"
Colonists Declare Independence
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Declaration of Independence (1776)
Chapter 8:"Constitutions Employ Every Pen"
Rebels Make Up New States
The Constitution of Virginia (1776)
Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776)
Constitution of Maryland (1776)
Chapter 9:"Great men get great praise, little men, nothing"
Private Martin Tells War Stories
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin (1830)
Chapter 10: "I can't tell a lie, Pa"
Parson Weems Invents George Washington
The Life of George Washington; with Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen (1809)
Chapter 11: "The general equality of condition among the people"
Monsieur Tocqueville Visits America
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1863)
Chapter 12: "The thoroughly American branch of painting"
Cole and Company Paint Nature's Nation
Paintings of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, William Bartlett, Asher Durand, and
Albert Bierstadt
Chapter 13: "Let every man of color wrap himself in mourning, for the 22nd of December and the 4th of July are days of mourning and not of joy"
Rev. Apess Rewrites American History
William Apess, A Son of the Forest (1831)
William Apess, Eulogy on King Philip (1836)
Chapter 14: "We Abolition women are turning the world upside down"
The Grimke Sisters Upset America
Angelina Grimke,An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free
States Issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (1836)
Sarah M. Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (1837)
Chapter 15: "A series of unfortunate incidents"
Jose Enrique de la Pena Remembers the Alamo
Jose Enrique De la Pena, With Santa Anna in Texas (1836)
Chapter 16: "I felt a degree of freedom"
Frederick Douglass Constructs a Life
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)
Chapter 17: "Negro slaves are the happiest people in the world"
George Fitzhugh Defends Slavery
George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South and Cannibals All! (1854)
George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters (1857)
Chapter 18: "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in"
President Lincoln Articulates America
Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Speech at Springfield, Illinois (1857)
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois (1858)
Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois (1858)
First Inaugural Address (1861)
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg (1863)
Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Chapter 19: "Photographic presentments will be accepted by posterity with an undoubting faith"
Cameramen and Other Artists Picture Gettysburg
Photographs and Illustrations of Gettysburg (1860s)
Chapter 20: "The terrorism was so great"
Congressmen Investigate the Ku Klux Klan
Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States (1871)
Afterword
Further Readings